930. Cryptonomicon

Cryptonomicon
Neal Stephenson
1999
Around 920 pages

And now we have a novel that isn't fun for an entirely different reason than the previous entry. Cryptonomicon is a novel written for tech nerds, which makes it pretty boring for a hot jock like me.

The action takes place in two periods, World War II and the late 1990s, during the Internet boom and the Asian financial crisis. In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, a code breaker and mathematical savant, is assigned to the newly formed joint Detachment 2702. This ultra-secret unit's role is to hide the fact that Allied intelligence has cracked the German Enigma code. At the same time, Japanese soldiers, including mining engineer Goto Dengo, are assigned to build a mysterious bunker in the mountains. In 1997, Lawrence's grandson joins his old role-playing game companion Avi Halaby in a new startup.

The storyline I most enjoyed was Goto's, but I was bored into a stupor with the 90s plot. 920 pages is a lot for this kind of writing, with its extremely detailed descriptions of math and digital currency. I'm always more interested in the human side of things, so I enjoyed the wartime drama more than the endless explanations of these complex topics.

This falls under the "not for me" category, where it's perfectly fine, but just doesn't fit my taste.

RATING: **---

Interesting Facts:

The title is a play on Necronomicon, the title of a book mentioned in the stories of H. P. Lovecraft,

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