Audiobook Review
Anathem (2008)
by Neal Stephenson
I love me a 30 hour plus long Audiobook version of a Neal Stephenson novel. Stephenson is the epitome of an author I want to read, but not necessarily deal with the bulky, physical book itself NOR the equally lengthy E-book edition. The physical version is 937 pages plus another 17 pages of foreword. 954 pages! Once a physical book goes over 600 pages it becomes an actual, physical burden to read so if I can avoid that experience I will. It took me months and months to make it through this Audiobook, mainly because the first two thirds of the book is almost unbelievably boring, just hours and hours of low-tech monks on some kind of earth like planet using a language that Stephenson concocted himself. As the title of the book might suggest, Stephenson's made-up language mostly sounds like an iteration of Latin which makes sense because the protagonist is a member of this alt-Earth monastic order that lives apart from the secular world.
The plot is slow- so slow- to develop but eventually a spaceship shows up around Arbre and the "mathic orders" and secular authority compete and combine to figure out WTH is going on. Only the third act, with a roughly improvised trip to space and engagement with the aliens on their spaceship, really meets any criterion for "exciting" and I can def see why there has never been a film or tv version of this book but the last few hours of action made me glad I had suffered through the rest of the Audiobook.
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