Dave
Canadian winters as a factor in a depressing world view? The Happy Face Canadian Face too?

Just finished Anathem - I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I like how S creates a "world" and also I like his diversions.

I have read all of SE's Malazan books - I found them more interesting as a total work - talk about complex - I am now rereading them going back in the classic sense of seeing meaning in complex situations from the benefit of hindsight.

It is beyond me that the author can "hold" all of this in his mind.

While the POV is very bleak - over time certain characters attach to the reader. They also unfold and expand. Because Death is not a binary issue in this universe, some return from the dead such as the Imperial Historian who at the end of Book two is retrieved from the cross - where have I heard that before?

I and many have found that when stuck in SE - move on - things become more clear as they do in real life over time as events accumulate into a pattern.

Many find The Baroque Cycle equally impenetrable but it is not bleak.

My own favorite moment is the long build up about the bladder stone and the choices of death in agony or an agonizing operation - all the while Pepys with his stone - and the party at the end of Book 2 when our hero finds that the gift is the operation.

Oh and Dave in passing - Natural Philosophy and the emerging idea of "Citizen Science".

I wonder if we may be seeing a rebirth of the approach to inquiry that was the feature of the 18th century?

The reason Canadian writers are so depressing is that they have within them a combination of Europeans' passion for the truth, and Indigenous Peoples' connection to the Earth and instincts. This is far too much terrible knowledge for most people to bear, and I think Canadian writers manage to cope with it by excising the terror through their writing. I see this also in Australian and New Zealand writers, and the cinematographers of all three nations.

I suspect you'll enjoy Anathem (though you may find some of the philosophical explanations simplistic and/or misleading).

Nice plotting...but I found his use of "archaic" words a bit excessive and the various didactic rabbit trails way too long. Most of all I missed the zaniness of Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon. Finally, I know it's speculative fiction, but I thought his premise for segregating knowledge (via a monasticism driven by a Butlerian Jihad of sorts) a little simplistic (but, hey, I've survived Dan Brown's premises).