Termination Shock

I don’t know whether Neal Stephenson doesn’t like good endings, can’t write them, or is just too tired at the end of yet another 700-page tome that he simply doesn’t have the energy to construct one. But I’ve yet to read one of his books – and I’m not counting those he’s co-written; they do end satisfyingly – where events don’t just wind down to a stop, like a car running out of petrol on a flat road. Termination Shock is no exception.

It's not that the book doesn’t end; the story has definitely reached a conclusion. But it manages to end in such a way that it’s impossible – well, I found it impossible – not to wonder whether it had been published with the last chapter missing.

Which isn’t to say it isn’t entertaining. I always looked forward to opening it up again and diving back into the story. And it’s full of all the things I’ve come to love about Neal Stephenson: fresh, unpredictable characters; a loose, rambling style that takes it time without ever being boring; multiple plot strands that seem to have no link whatsoever but that all do finally come together.

I mean, it’s hard not to love a book in which the Queen of the Netherlands meets a Texas billionaire with a plan to slow global warming, while at the same time falling for a part-Comanche hunter of feral hogs. And that’s leaving out Chinese psychological warfare, tsunami bombs and a Canadian-Punjabi who travels to the Line of Actual Control on the Sino-India border to engage in non-lethal martial arts combat.

I enjoyed it all enormously. But I just couldn’t help asking, when it was all over, And then what happened?