Polostan

Stephenson, the author of Cryptonomicon (1999), Anathem (2008), and the Baroque Cycle, launches a new series with this tremendously entertaining novel. It tells the story of Dawn Rae Bjornberg, born in the early years of the twentieth century in America to an anarchist family and raised (briefly) in Russia by a staunch Leninist, growing up to become a spy for the KGB. The book weighs in at slightly more than 300 pages, but there is so much rich detail, so many beautifully crafted characters, and so epic a story, that it feels somehow much larger than its page-count. Stephenson is a truly gifted writer, with a writing style unlike any other, and an imagination that can be startling in its originality and complexity. It would be foolish to speculate whether this is one of his best novels, since everything he writes is different from everything else, but one thing is sure: once you turn Polostan's first page, you won't look up from the book until you've turned its last. A glorious achievement from a unique and compelling writer.

Stephenson (Termination Shock) is a towering talent whose discursive writing style meshes smoothly with the complexity of this plot and its characters. A winner of literary awards for speculative fiction, he depicts real life with details right out of the tomes of history and science. His first volume of "Bomb Light," a new series about the coming of the Atomic Age, introduces Dawn, a.k.a. Aurora, a smart, spunky teenager whose perils-of-Pauline life places her alongside the icons of early 20th-century history: Bolsheviks in Russia, Bonus Marchers in Washington, and physicists at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. She plays polo, as taught by her cowboy anarchist cousins in Montana, assembles a tommy gun to help her Leninist dad in Leningrad, and survives water torture in Siberia. Fair means or foul, she's a survivor ready for the next installment of Stephenson's exciting new series. VERDICT Creating a cohesive novel that features nuclear physics, the sport of polo, the excitement of a world's fair, and the dangers of unprotected sex is a gargantuan task. Stephenson leaves readers winded but satisfied.--Barbara Conaty

An adventurous young woman makes her way into the Soviet Union's intelligence service in the first volume of Stephenson's new Bomb Light series. It's 1933. Bonnie and Clyde are all over the American newspapers, the Soviet Union is casting its mark on the world stage, and scientists are making exciting breakthroughs that are beginning to transform society. A young woman meets an old friend, an engineer named Bob, at a San Francisco diner. Dawn Rae Bjornberg, who was born to an American anarchist mother, was raised in Russia by a Leninist father, and spent her teen years in Montana, has faked the death of her American identity and intends to make her way from California to the USSR so she can start a new life in the service of socialism. But when Dawn--now going by her Russian name, Aurora--attracts the attention of the newly formed Soviet intelligence agency, she'll have to explain how her strange childhood in Russia led to her colorful adolescence in America, or risk being killed as a suspected spy. And if she succeeds in proving her innocence, the USSR may have even more dangerous plans for her. The first installment in Stephenson's historical epic paints an engrossing picture of the United States during the Great Depression, the Soviet Union in its tumultuous and violent early years, and the looming threat of the technological advancements that will soon lead to the atomic bomb and the space race. Dawn/Aurora's early life is captivating on its own, but Stephenson manages to set her up with a brilliant cliffhanger that will have readers begging for the next volume. A deeply immersive historical epic. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.