This was my third attempt at reading this book, but I finally made it through this time. Usually, I make it through to the detailed description of dog dismemberment (which is a pretty reasonable place to lose momentum in a book), but I pushed through and found that it got pretty interesting. At least for the first third. The second section lost my interest a little bit. The adventures of Jack Shaftoe didn’t really interest me too much. It felt a little bit like Stephenson just needed to add some action. The (very) lengthy chase scene with the witches felt gratuitous.

The last section regained my interest a bit, but I’m not sure I’m as interested in the development of our modern thinking about economy as I am in the development of our modern thinking about science. Also, I find Eliza to be a fairly horrible character. I’d sort of forgotten that Stephenson is not particularly good at writing female characters (Nell from The Diamond Age is perhaps the exception, since Stephenson basically writes her as gender-neutral as possible). I’m kind of dreading the rest of the series, if she’s going to remain a main character.