Wow, that was one of the shortest post-climaxes ever, and I've read a lot of Neal Stephenson.

I do actually get to the end of the book curious to see where the rest of the series takes the world, but I can't say I really enjoyed reading the book much. It really lacked narrative drive - it was less "the character wants x but y intervenes" and more "here are a bunch of character who want conflicting things - let's watch what happens!" Added to this, I didn't particularly like any of the viewpoint characters (with the exception of Dhosti, but he mostly spent his time going, "Alas! If only I'd moved sooner!") and I didn't particularly care about them, which made the whole thing decidedly underwhelming.

Not to mention that once the ultimate bad-guy IS revealed, he's then dealt with and the book wrapped up in the space of ten pages. Er... what? ( )

Described to me as "S. L. Farrel's A Magic of Twilight trilogy does deal with the conflict between people who think their power comes from the gods and people who can use this same power and are atheists; I haven't finished it, but I think the atheists are in the right (as the acknowledgments credits Richard Dawkins with some of the ideas explored in the book). It's interesting stuff that I would put in the 'castle opera' subgenre, where it's conflict between nations that's political and pragmatic, instead of being about "evil shit coming from the north" or "catastrophe from beyond threatens everyone" or "kill the evil sorcerer overlord". "

it was like homework! I was so confused! ( )

This is a world seen though many people, it's religion and heretics very well marked and done. Religion controls almost everything. It's a interesting book but strange sometimes by the change of characters each chapters. ( )