1 Really? I thought the India and Mexico bits were kind of slow and silly, although I still liked the book. I suppose it was because it felt as if Stephenson's shaggy-dog-story habits were closer to the surface than he usually got with the Turkish and European sections.

2 Yes, but this time you didn't have to wade through 30-page wads of 17th-century epistlery to get to the good bits. Only a third of The Confusion needs to be edited out, rather than (as in the case of Quicksilver) one half.
Sometimes I'm in the mood for a wandering tale like this, but even then Quicksilver pushed my limits.
I think this one was more of a story, and less trying-to-be-important, which was why I liked it. That and the endless pages of letters in Q. Still, I'd love to see what a writer with, say, Fritz Leiber's skill could have done with the tale.

3 Personally I love Stephenson, and at least in part because of the digressions rather than in spite of them. They add character to the story, in my mind. The opposite would be someone like China Mieville (also highly recommended, especially if you like steampunk) who paints in broad strokes and very rarely gives you more than a hint of what he is talking about.
Amazon UK has eaten my copy of Q, so I have no opinion on that as of yet, but I have read most of the rest of the Stephenson canon, and like the later, more prone to digression books more than the earlier ones.

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