People who claim they are motivated by the Purpose end up behaving differently - and generally better - than people who serve other masters.

I am conflicted on this book. The first two thirds were incredible. The story had me hooked immediately and I loved all aspects of the book. Then the final third happened and the momentum stopped and finishing became a chore.

The technobabble and constant focus on “show, don’t tell” didn’t bother me. I enjoyed tangents about orbital physics, complications in managing propellant, and discussions about how similar technology to what exists today could be used to prepare for the end of humanity. There was no deus ex machina, the technology and solutions all felt probable and not entirely unrealistic.

I was invested with the Izzy and Earth characters during the Hard Rain. The final moments of humanity reminded me of the band playing as the Titanic sank. It was elegance and bravery in the face of utter destruction, and it was incredible.

The mind couldn't think about the End of the World all the time. It needed the occasional break, a romp through the trivial. Because it was through trivia that the mind was anchored.

As the years advanced I liked how the focus of the story did too. Technology was still an important character, but it was now addressing interpersonal conflicts and showed that the survivors on Izzy still had baggage with them and tried to apply their own personal agenda on the remaining human race.

The characters were secondary to the story and the struggle for survival, and this was okay, until the final “book” showed up.

I will put the remainder of the review in spoiler tags because I discuss the final third of the book and spoilers exist.

The meeting would later be known as the Council of the Seven Eves.

The unique characteristics of each Eve, their genetic modifications to their descendants and racial struggles that evolved over time were now very critical to the story. I had spent the previous two thirds of the book focusing on the struggle for survival and less on how each character interacted that I felt like I was handed a pop quiz at the start of the third “book” and realized I had been focusing on all the wrong material.

Another reviewer commented that the final stages of the book "sent an engineer to do an anthropologist's job", and I fully understand that. There was an unnecessary amount of time discussing social situations, racial tensions, how Red and Blue interacted when all I want to learn about is how humanity survived for another five thousand years! And when I got my wish as future technology was described that became a chore too.

I enjoyed the creativity and extrapolation of what the future civilization looked like but the book became bogged down in the details. There was no tension and no reason for me to care. The human race survived and was returning to Earth. The last five millennia of a struggle was coming to an end and the story lacked a finish. What conflict remained felt silly (which I’ll cover in a moment) and a bit of a bore.

Some suggested that this story could have been broken up into a proper trilogy, and that would have been great. It could have also wrapped up with a few pages on the life of Kath Two looking down at an Earth that has been rebuilt and wondering about the possibilities it may contain. This would be just a hint to know that humans, in one form or another, continue.

Unfortunately the direction of the final third of the book lacked direction and a reason to be involved as a reader, which is disappointing because the first two thirds of the book did that perfectly.

It was enough to keep the ship lodged in one place until they decided to move it. Which they never would.

To address the Diggers/Spacers/Red v Blue conflict near the end let me pull up a tweet that Neil deGrass Tyson made in November 2014 regarding Interstellar:

In #Interstellar: On another planet, around another star, in another part of the galaxy, two guys get into a fist fight.

Civilization has survived and evolved from an apocalypse and what happens next: we fight. There is conflict. We have evolved beyond our wildest dreams and yet we have to settle our differences with aggression.

This was a disappointing finish and I wonder if that was the point too. Perhaps Neal was making a point here that, simply put, the more things change the more they stay the same. We can change who we are genetically but we can’t change the fact that we are all flawed in the same way and that results in fighting.

This is my first Neal Stephenson book and I’m impressed. This is an ambitious stand alone story with a lot of detail and effort put into creating a world that has unique mechanics (mechanical and biological). There were some interesting assumptions about the future and offered a very fun hypothesis about the future, even if it still comes down to fisticuffs.