As tends to be the case, Stephenson spends nearly 1000 pages pouring all sorts of fascinating ideas into my head. Typically dense and fast-paced, connected to several earlier books but entirely standalone, spanning decades or eons (depending on your point of view), and moving from modern social networking culture and its affects on our wider culture to virtual spaces (with some similarities to, but far removed from, those of Snow Crash), creation mythologies, and battles among gods with plenty of stops along the way, Stephenson continues to be one of my favorite current authors.