Neat palace intrigue! Likable (and incredibly principled) characters, probably more for a YA audience, though graphic and brutal at times.
Hello NSA, I liked this book! Seriously, this is a great memoir about preserving civil liberty, very well written and reasoned. Highly recommended!
I'm glad this one is over, it really became a drag on the last 400 pages or so. I'd had Anathem on my list for a long time, picked it up after reading @rixx' recommendation, and because I had enjoyed Cryptonomicon very much, but this one wasn't for me. For all of the endless time the book spends on world-building, it isn't interesting enough, for the time it spends discussing quantum physics, I didn't find it clear or insightful enough (I don't know who quipped 'quantum mechanics are weird, and so is the brain, therefore they are equal', but it seems apt), and I didn't find the characters compelling. Plots feel wrought and weird, gadgets that are super-important for a couple of chapters suddently drop from the narrative, and (above all) the narrator is an angsty late teenager who cannot help but judge every female character he encounters by his degree of attraction to her. Maybe I ended up skimming too much (I switched to the audio edition toward the end), didn't pay sufficient attention, or just didn't pick up on whatever the notions the author was trying to get across — I can't help but come away from the book feeling that the time wasn't well spent.
Now this is just fantastic. After the straightforward morality of Intisar Khanani's books, this is one where both story and narration are much more twisted. The writing is dripping with snark (and profanity), revelling in the gritty description of Camorr. Through every heist and con, Lamora and companions are delightful companions, upping the ante with every page. Sleep was sacrificed in the completion of this book!