Stephenson fills his thousand-plus-page tomes easily, because he's prone to meandering tangents regarding various minutiae (some brief, some pages long). These were the same tangents that made me toss away Tolkein in disgust, so it goes to show what a difference it makes when the subject matter happens to be endlessly fascinating (which I'm sure Middle Earth is for its fans, too). Suspenseful, exciting, and brilliantly realized.