Inconsistent - some greatness amongst some disjointed tedium . I got this for Christmas and finished it late last night.     As the tale begins, the author initiates two primary storylines, The first is set in WWII spanning both the European and Pacific theatres. The second is modern day and is centered on a California start-up (with requisite ambitious young guys) with primary business interests in the far east. One knows the stories are connected because of similar last names in both. The other connection is encryption - how crytography was central to the war and how it is central to current day business and, in the author's view, central to the future of civilization.    One of the great pluses of the book is how the author made use of these commonalities between WW2 and modern-day to create interest and anticipation. The middle of the book actually made use of these quite well and I was eager to keep reading. There is some terrific writing in middle sections and descriptions of people and places both in Europe and the Far East are very vivid.    The author does write with terrific humour at times and I was reminded in several places about a series of books written about WWI called "The Bandy Papers - the Journals of Bartholomew Bandy" by Donald Jack. Very similar in style as the author captures the points of view - dry wit - of Grandpa (WW2) and grandson (techno geek) Waterhouse.    The presentation of Gen. Douglas McArthur was (from my Canadian perpective) endearingly flag-waving-pipe-chomping-bullet- shedding-American-Super-hero and, of course, totally unbelievable.    Then I hit the final pages where I had hoped to receive a big-payoff to the build-up over the previous thousand pages. Alas, it was not to be and all the tedious verbiage that scarred the entire book turned out to be a sad bell-weather.    One of the "1 star" reviews amongst these reviews suggested that Tolkien was nothing compared to Neal Stephenson as far as filling up pages with words. There are numerous examples of page after page of "who cares" blathering which may tell us that some of the characters are in fact terribly boring individuals but do not deepen the characterizations. One of the good points is that when you hit such a section - and the reader will recognize them - you can simply skip about 5 pages or more and pick up the story without missing anything. The book could have been shortened by about 400 pages, maybe more. I'm guessing there is an encrypted message in the pages somewhere but I couldn't care less.    Some story lines, characters and inferences are left totally unresolved in the end (e.g. what happened to the dentist?). A case of author boredom and a loss of interest as the ending approached? And why the heck did Andrew Loeb make a final appearance! Talk about out-of-place and just bizarre.    I dunno what the author is thinking sometimes but several times he comes across as just a tad too clever. At least 3 times during the book (inluding the opening pages) I didn't have a clue what he was talking about. For example, one such bit of cleverness is his incorporation of the Hindenberg disaster in New Jersey - the narrative is written at that point from the perspective of a main character who stumbles literally out of the woods after seeing a brightness in the sky. It is not central or even obliquely of interest to the story line. The author never mentions Hindenberg by name and it is left to the reader (if you can pass the author's ever-so-clever test of cleverness) to figure it out. It seemed somewhat a condescending (to the reader) writing style.    There is the usual technology-dropping (like dropping names but gadgets instead of people) to presumably up the coolness factor and from my knowledge it is mostly, but not always, believable.    Ultimately, why there is some terrific writing, the overall result is a draft that needs 1 or 2 more rewrites and a worthy ending to really tell a terrific story.      Summary - go directly to Tom Clancy's books which are executed much better and have endings that offer a consistent pay-off (but with less humour). Clancy can also go on and on... but not like this guy!    The paperback story is 1130 pages of small type that is hard to read
Output: NEG