Phillip Krzeminski

Still fresh after 60+ years

Revisado: 08-10-21

This book is as relevant today as it was when it was written, maybe even more so as we create new ways to destroy ourselves, either by climate change, disease, or war. It reads well and has better characterization than a lot of early sci-fi, a tall order especially as this book introduces essentially three casts.

The narrator was excellent- a clear reader offering enough voice work to help easily differentiate characters.

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A good story but not Neal Stephenson's best

Revisado: 09-24-19

First, let me say that Will Dufris does a great job of narrating and differentiating the legion of characters in this book.

I am a long-time fan of Neal Stephenson (having read Snowcrash as a teen) and I've Cryptonomicon until now, mostly because it was a bit intimidating: both because of its size and because of how much various friends and acquaintances spoke of it as some revelatory experience. Well, having finally finished it, I can say it wasn't a game-changer for me, personally, and I don't think it stacks up particularly well against his other books. While it is certainly a fun story with some twists and turns (I especially liked the WWII Waterhouse portions) it didn't have very much at all in the way of the thought-provoking or paradigm-shifting writing I've come to associate with Stephenson. The best parts are towards the end and are mostly throw-away lines nad thoughts from Enoch Root. The best parts of the book are the adventurous pulpy WWII segments with Bobby Shaftoe, Lawrence Waterhouse, and Goto Dengo. The modern portions of the book fall heavily into Stephenson trope-land...the same tired nerdish characters that he uses often enough that they all sort of blend together (the hapless nerd who is super smart but lazy, the absurdly and esotrically multi-racial high-functioning nerd, etc).

The book also has a lot of issues from a modern person perspective - namely in areas of race and gender. I have seen lots of reviews that suggest that Stephenson is a sexist/racist/homophobic based on this book and I don't really think that is fair - he represents people a lot better in his other books. However, I can definitely see why people who have read only this book would think that...It is VERY hard to separate the overt racism and sexism expressed by a 1940's era character from being interpreted as the author's own opinions...a case that is not helped much by the fact that his modern characters (mid 1990s) also sort of casually racist and CERTAINLY sexist (which is also accurate for the time, I guess, but not really a quality I am looking for in a protagonist). Which brings me to the main failing of the book: female characters.

All of the females in this book fail to be anything other than sexual objects for the men. The female characters can be summed up as: a slutty german spy, a vapid socialite who is reliant on men for everything and despite being highly religious...is also kinda slutty, and finally, a caricature of a hacker's fetish tomboy badass who is super dominant and sexually liberated but also a virgin. What do all these women have in common? They all sleep with hapless and socially inept nerd guys. It reads as much like self-insert fanfiction as you can get in a critically acclaimed book.

Barring that stuff, it is a very interesting book, with all the crazy tangents of intellectualism that Stephenson is famous for....you will know a little bit more about everything (from computer code, mathmatics, and deep sea cables, etc) for having read it.

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A good story but not Neal Stephenson's best

Revisado: 09-24-19

First, let me say that Will Dufris does a great job of narrating and differentiating the legion of characters in this book.

I am a long-time fan of Neal Stephenson (having read Snowcrash as a teen) and I've Cryptonomicon until now, mostly because it was a bit intimidating: both because of its size and because of how much various friends and acquaintances spoke of it as some revelatory experience. Well, having finally finished it, I can say it wasn't a game-changer for me, personally, and I don't think it stacks up particularly well against his other books. While it is certainly a fun story with some twists and turns (I especially liked the WWII Waterhouse portions) it didn't have very much at all in the way of the thought-provoking or paradigm-shifting writing I've come to associate with Stephenson. The best parts are towards the end and are mostly throw-away lines nad thoughts from Enoch Root. The best parts of the book are the adventurous pulpy WWII segments with Bobby Shaftoe, Lawrence Waterhouse, and Goto Dengo. The modern portions of the book fall heavily into Stephenson trope-land...the same tired nerdish characters that he uses often enough that they all sort of blend together (the hapless nerd who is super smart but lazy, the absurdly and esotrically multi-racial high-functioning nerd, etc).

The book also has a lot of issues from a modern person perspective - namely in areas of race and gender. I have seen lots of reviews that suggest that Stephenson is a sexist/racist/homophobic based on this book and I don't really think that is fair - he represents people a lot better in his other books. However, I can definitely see why people who have read only this book would think that...It is VERY hard to separate the overt racism and sexism expressed by a 1940's era character from being interpreted as the author's own opinions...a case that is not helped much by the fact that his modern characters (mid 1990s) also sort of casually racist and CERTAINLY sexist (which is also accurate for the time, I guess, but not really a quality I am looking for in a protagonist). Which brings me to the main failing of the book: female characters.

All of the females in this book fail to be anything other than sexual objects for the men. The female characters can be summed up as: a slutty german spy, a vapid socialite who is reliant on men for everything and despite being highly religious...is also kinda slutty, and finally, a caricature of a hacker's fetish tomboy badass who is super dominant and sexually liberated but also a virgin. What do all these women have in common? They all sleep with hapless and socially inept nerd guys. It reads as much like self-insert fanfiction as you can get in a critically acclaimed book.

Barring that stuff, it is a very interesting book, with all the crazy tangents of intellectualism that Stephenson is famous for....you will know a little bit more about everything (from computer code, mathmatics, and deep sea cables, etc) for having read it.

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Definitely worth a listen...and a re-listen!

Revisado: 08-27-19

If you are interested in Soviet (or pre/post-Soviet) history and culture, this book is a must-read. If you have a casual interest in modern world history or politics, I would also strongly recommend it. Especially at the time of this review (2018), the lessons to be learned about the signs and effects of totalitarianism and authoritarianism are very prescient as the global embrace of strong-man politics and nationalism seems to grow daily.

Masha weaves together a tapestry of characters, along with their personal stories and philosophies, that interweave and overlap as the book progresses. I instantly invested in many of these personalities and loved how things served back and forth from personal anecdotes to deep philosophical and sociological analysis. The author does a fine job of clear narration but doesn't do as well as a professional narrator or voice actor at differentiating characters. My only real critique of the book is that the cast is so large that it is sometimes difficult to pick up the thread of who is talking, which could have been easily solved with a bit more variety in the PoV narration. I'll definitely be re-listening to this book in the future, as it is so richly packed with nuggets of wisdom that no single reading will really allow you to synthesize it all.

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Great production, fun story in the Aliens formula

Revisado: 08-12-19

William Gibson's Alien 3 doesn't reinvent the franchise but draws a clean line down the middle between the suspense and horror of Alien and the Action Thriller that was Aliens. The story focuses a lot more on Hicks and Bishop than Ripley, who is barely involved in the plot. However, there are a few new memorable strong female characters introduced. The audio drama format is perfect, with a lot of the original actors returning (Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen), and very talented substitutes filling in everywhere else (Ripley and Newt, for example). The only thing that is really new is the UPP (Union of Progressive Peoples), a socialist nation-state analogous to the Soviet Union that is in a cold war with the corporation-owned government of the main characters. Everything else plays out more or less according to the franchise's formula. The book is worth the price of admission just for the production and voice acting. Otherwise, the script is still free on the internet. I read this years and years ago in the early days of the internet and the "cleaned up" version is much better than Gibson's original draft, which was pure action movie material.

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Good acting, weak plot

Revisado: 04-25-19

The story started off pretty strong, but fizzles pretty quickly once things jump into the Sequel era. The ending makes pretty much no sense and is VERY contrived. This is another installment of “Han is Dumb” which seems to be a trend with the new canon books, and though he is the butt of a lot of jokes in the films, he’s never just an idiot. Homer Simpson in space seems to be the new theme for Han - it makes you wonder if the people writing this have even seen the movies sometimes.

Jim Cummings is incredible as Hondo and with general narration, but the rest of his character voices leave something to be desired (even as Hondo doing impressions).

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A Strong Character-Driven Story

Revisado: 04-23-19

E.K. Johnston is becoming one of my favorite “new” authors in the Star Wars franchise for her ability to evoke the feel of Star Wars and deliver powerful character-driven stories featuring strong female characters. Though this book started a bit slow, it was a great tale of Padmé Amidala’s transition from Queen to Galactic Senator - a worthy story that adds depth to a character that was underserved in the films. Additionally, once it gets going in chapter 2-3, the story feels as fast paced as any Star Wars adventure, while being mostly a tale of political intrigue. It expands the genres bounds and tells a SW story from a different perspective (similar to the Rouge One prequel, Catalyst). Her development of the various handmaidens and other senators was also exemplary, I hope that she writes a Mon Mothma book someday...another hugely important character that has always been relegated to the background.

The voice acting was overall very good - nice that they got Padmés voice actor from CW to do it. My only reservation was that her range was somewhat limited (granted that the cast of characters was HUGE) and at times it was difficult to tell some of them apart (especially characters in the lower ranges). However, she delivered the dialog well and with a lot of emotion, which more than made up for it.

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McNeill is the weakest of the series authors

Revisado: 09-09-18

Though I’m glad there wasn’t yet another reprise of the Istivan III battle, the first third of the book was a real crawl. I didn’t really feel connected to any of the characters this time around, as there was no real protagonist. The fall of Fulgrim was certainly more thought out and tragic than Horus’...this is definitely guilty of the “every warrior is more perfect and beautiful than the last” descriptors of the series. When everyone is perfect/grand then no one is.

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A lot of repetition

Revisado: 08-31-18

The performance by Keeble was excellent, but the first 1/3 of the book is essentially a repeat of the last novel from a SLIGHTLY different perspective. The originality content was engaging enough, especially the descriptions of the creatures of the warp, though I felt like Garro was essentially cut from the same cloth as Loken, with the only real difference being his embrace of the emperor’s divinity.

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Not quite as good as the first

Revisado: 08-16-18

Toby Longworth’s performance was excellent but the story and characterization isn’t quite up to the first novels standard. I felt like the fall of Horus was abrupt and out of character, much too easily fooled for a man that is supposed to be a borderline demigod.

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