Seveneves

A qualified thumbs up for this one from me. It's much much better than his last effort, the dire Reamde, but still doesn't regain the heights of Cryptonomicon or Snow Crash. The main issue for me is what Stephenson chooses to show. I was a bit peeved after reading fifty pages of orbital mechanics to discover that, while all these velocity changes were going on, just over there they were having revolutions and space cannibalism and all sorts that gets glossed over in a paragraph or two. The structure of the book is a bit frustrating as well - there's nothing wrong with the first two thirds, but the final section is begging for more exploration. It throws up all sorts of interesting ideas and developments that don't have time to go anywhere.

That said, it's still a good read. If a giant rock does ever hit the moon, this is probably how it'll go down.