To fund these freebies, Jack makes and sells bootleg “fun-time worker drugs.” Unfortunately, this time is not such a fun time: her latest product is a copy of a drug that kills people via hyper-addiction to a single task: study to death, paint to death, you get the idea. (Newitz’s examples of this are morbidly creative.) To make up for her part in the drug’s dissemination, Jack works her network of contacts to formulate a cure.

The Big Oppressive Government sends agents Eliasz and his robot companion Paladin to track her down and enforce Draconian patent laws. Lurking in the background is the company that originally created the drug, intent on making sure no one learns about its fatal flaw.

The hunter/hunted story runs a fairly straight line, with all the players and motivations apparent, so while the journey is interesting, the destination doesn’t hold many surprises. Autonomous is less action-heavy than its opening would imply, carrying us along through the strength of its characters.

In Jack, we have a flawed protagonist, whose life began on a trajectory of success, only have the veneer of the world stripped away, setting her on the path of an outlaw intent on destroying the “endless pharma deprivation death machine.” There’s a lot of emphasis on who she’s sleeping with at any given moment, but those relationships do have a big impact on her life trajectory and help to form her personality.

More interesting to me is how Newits manufactures sympathy for the antagonists, Eliasz and Paladin, by delving into their burgeoning man/machine relationship. The romance unfolds in a genuinely interesting and non-standard way, evoking questions of gender identity, anthropomorphism, assumptions about human sexuality, free will, and slavery. (There’s even some fourth-wall anthropomorphizing, where the author describes Paladin’s state of mind in a way that sounds like human thought processes.)

I didn’t want them to catch Jack, but I did want to see how their personal drama unfolded, and I was drawn into what would happen next in their investigation, even as they murdered and tortured people to reach their goal. It was like watching a supercar run over pedestrians while the occupants make out.
 
The biggest point of contention I have with Autonomous, the one that stuck with me, is Eliasz’s homophobia and Paladin’s attempt to “compute” its meaning. The homophobia felt wedged in to create conflict and force readers to think about the implications, but it seemed under-supported by his character development and incongruous to the world. Also, it took up more of the story than its narrative weight, as if Newitz came up with that idea first and then built the relationship plot around it.

The final character of note is the world itself. We get a sense of the massive role of pharmaceuticals in daily life and a window into a future where capitalism has become so cancerous that nearly everything and everyone can be owned. It's a critique, a warning, and scary even if the in-book technicalities are a bit unstable. A harsh indenture system looms over everything, hipsters rock bio-modifications (Purple roots for hair! Utility bacteria! More fun future-tech!), and sentient robots share their internal and external lives. I really enjoyed the descriptions and creativity of the various locales, laws, and cultural filigree, which hinted at countless percolating stories beneath and beyond this one. As for governments, Newits gives us some vague explanations of how they work, but don’t read Autonomous if you’re hoping for geopolitical machinations.

All in all, Autonomous was a well-written, easy-to-read story set in a colorful world inhabited by people whose lives made me wonder about, and want to explore, more of the setting.

They story kicks off when Zula’s desperate/idiot boyfriend bungles the sale of stolen credit card numbers. For her poor choice in men, Zula is rewarded with a kidnapping, and we are yanked into an around-the-world adventure involving every type of villain ever punched by Liam Neeson (and a few he hasn’t—get on that!).

See, all the makings of a page-turning thriller. And it is, but it's also more, and your enjoyment of the novel will depend on how much you like that "more" part.

Reamde brims with details vast, deep, and edifying. Want a glimpse into the Russian mafia's white collar crime operations? Check. Curious about how virtual terrain and game economies are created and managed? Got that too! Hungering for a comprehensive description of the topography along a section of the US-Canadian border? No? Well, it’s got it anyway.

The first several chapters introduce us to Stephenson's info-heavy style. This block of characterization had me checking the description several times to make sure I was reading a thriller. We get grandpa watching TV, people chatting on a gun range, backstory on a woman killed by lightning.

I understand the why: it developed a clear sense of Richard’s strained relationship with his family, and so made him more real and the ending more meaningful. Cool. But Stephenson could've achieved the same thing with less—an issue that rears its head throughout the book.

Still, power on, it's worth it.

These sidetracks mostly feel quick because of the interesting views along the way. But there are moments where Stephenson’s descriptions of, for example, the hills, rocks, trees, and their exact configuration drain the action of some momentum. Then the next scene roars into your face, drowning out the impatience and forcing you to hold on, white-knuckled.

Multiple story threads take us through China, the Philippines, Seattle and other exotic locals, with an eclectic groups of tour guides: a Hungarian hacker, Russian mobsters, and networked Islamic terrorists. The kind of guides that'll show you a good time right before beating you to death in a dirty alley with a technical manual.

The rich cast of characters had my attention, especially Zula. She’s a fighter but not indestructible, with a textured backstory based on her home country of Eritrea. I connected with her even more than, say, Jazz, from Andy Weir’s Artemis. I also developed a fascination with several of the baddies. Or a fear of. A fine line between the two.

To sum up, despite an info-heavy story and one big infusion of plot thickening coincidence, the brilliant parts equal more than the sum of the whole.

Oh, by the way, it about 1000 pages.

While most writers try to extract the tastiest pieces from their ideas and cook them into a satisfying meal, Murakami revels in including everything. Along with a buffet of events both wonderful and bizarre, he wants you to root through daily minutia: taking out the garbage, exercising, pining, cooking, banal eroticism and and and...

These "ands" caused my appetite to wane. At times, I had to restrain myself from skipping repetitive descriptions, echoing dialog, and plot tangents to get back to the juicy stuff (of which there is a lot; it’s over 1000 pages).

Some may feel a literary master like Murakami can get away with this because he expatiates on purpose in his unique style, which is both dreamlike and deadpan. For those readers who enjoy making use of every narrative element, boiling them down, curing them, or otherwise doing the work to extract meaning, 1Q84 will captivate. I, however, had trouble digesting it.

In summary, 1Q84 is a weighty story with an interesting through line, but you need to have a lot of patience and a taste for wandering details.

Final Thought:

At one point, there is an exchange between Aomame, the assassin (for lack of a better term), and her main client’s fixer/bodyguard.

     “Have you read it?” (Aomame said.)
    “No, I’ve never been in jail, or had to hide out for a long time. Someone once said unless you have those kinds of opportunities, you can’t read the whole of Proust.”
     “Do you know anybody who has read the whole thing?”

Which book were they actually talking about? This may be a glimpse of 1Q84’s self-awareness.