Steven Mastroyin's Reviews > Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

I'd like to give a little more than 3 stars but it's hard.

Generally though, 5 stars for meatspace, 2 stars for Bitspace. This seems to be the general consensus of reviews, and while I hate to agree with consensus, it's hard to find fault. I suppose like others I completely missed the point because the stories of Bitspace I found to just be so uninteresting, derivative, and boring. I guess the idea that the human mind would not be able to escape the trappings of human experience is interesting, but I don't feel it was really explored. It was kind of like the entire point of Bitspace was to recreate the creation myths of the past. But, I was just so completely overwhelmingly bored. The long middle chapters about the journey of Adam and Eve I had to just start skipping entire paragraphs of text for want of literally anything interesting happening. The final act which people have mentioned being bad I actually at least found more fun to read, if still also pretty rote and kind of lame.

I don't really want to go about too many spoilers, but I was really disappointed in what he chose to explore,and I feel it left a lot of questions. So, some spoilers ahead.

First, if everyone in meatspace is privy to the events in Bitworld, WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO GET UPLOADED?

Second, what was El doing other than being a "bad" god? He seemed to have almost literally no plan. I get it, he wanted the resources for himself, hence enslaving so many souls to low cycle drudgery or just hibernation in the hive. But, it really doesn't make a lot of sense. In the real world he talked so much of what he would want to do absent the bounds of physical laws...and then his vision is just to become a dictator? This is really weak sauce. Probably the worst villain of any Stephenson book.

Third, the entire idea of a quasi-eternal life should be upending the physical world. And yet, we only get very narrow views of what is going on with the characters, who make less and less sense as the book goes on. I understand that this may be part of the point. But I didn't like it.

Fourth, we have a subtitle "Dodge in Hell" but get almost literally nothing about Dodge's experience other than his ability to create. I don't know, I thought maybe we would have more about his journey and the journey of awakening consciousness.

The only enjoyable thing about the entire finish is the idea that Meatspace in this book was actually always another bitworld, and it was bitworlds all the way down going back who knows how long. But even this is pulled from like, three lines of the book and I'm probably over-extrapolating.

I love Stephenson generally and I like his prose. I really like seveneves, I loved REAMDE, etc. I don't need him to write exceptionally complicated claptrap to be satisfied. But, I think he really missed here.