It took three months to read, but really it was done in three rather lengthy marathons with several weeks of not reading it in between.

Overall, a decent story. Very ambitious, and Stephenson's world-building is as good as ever. There were some great parts, and he even managed to make the long discussions mostly bearable.

That said, I had a few problems with the writing. For one thing, Stephenson is not the best word-maker, and his "slang" is hit or miss: "Concent" was the only word that really stuck out as a good invention. While this isn't a huge deal in and of itself, the problem came when characters started discussing complex mathematical/philosophical ideas in unfamiliar terminology.

All of this adds up to the fact that this book probably is one that would need to be re-read a number of times to really "get it." However, while it was enjoyable enough on a first read, I don't think it merits the sort of repeat readings that certain other works of similar size do.