Cryptonomicon is an epic story captured in a massive 1000-page book. The story is set in two era- world war II and 1990s. At any point of time there is a lot of stuff going on that becomes hard to keep track of. I regretted my decision of reading the hard copy of the book when I could have read the Kindle one, because there were times when a reference of an event will come which would have happened 500 pages back and I have to flip around them to find it. I heard this would be a difficult read for those who are reading Neal for the first time but for me it was quite comfortable, exhausting but comfortable 🙂
There are a lot of characters here but the story revolves around 4 major character. Lawrence Pitchard Waterhouse who is mathematical genius and a good friend and fellow scholar with Allen Turing. Bobby Shaftoe who is an US Marine in world war II. Goto Dengo a Japanese Marine and Mining engineer and Randy Waterhouse who was the grandson of Lawrence and a sort of Computer nerd and entrepreneur in 1990s
Lawrence was assigned the job to join a secrete division Detachment 2702 and work in Bletchley Park to generate false information to prevent the Axis force and their friend Rudy (who was also a Genius and worked for Axis force) from finding out that Allies have broken Enigma. He then moves to Australia and works on breaking Japanese Cryptosystem Azure and Arethusa.
Bobby Shaftoe is assigned the job to work as a part of Detachment 2702 and sent to some mission to create the fake information and noise as worked out by Lawrence. He actually has no idea why he’s on the mission but knows there is some significance of it and it is related to Waterhouse. But somehow he ends up in Sweden and then in Philippines. He also becomes a part of a conspiracy with Rudy and some German Marines to dig up the gold hidden by Japanese.
Goto Dengo was assigned a suicidal mission to dig up a mine in Philippines to hide all the gold looted by the Japanese during world war.
Randy’s story mostly about him and his Partner Avi’s effort to build first an Infrastructure for internet by laying down cables on ocean near Philippines where he meets Douglas McArthur Shaftoe (Son of Bobby Shafoe) and his daughter America Shaftoe. Later he starts working on a Data Heaven (a data center) and digital money and to back this money he’s needs gold and from there starts their quest to find the gold hidden by the Japanese.
For me the most intriguing and fun part is the story of Lawrence Waterhouse. The whole set up of Bletchley Part is fascinating, his work in Cryptography, his fantasies when he was lonely 😉 and him inventing a digital computer and later breaking the whole Gold conspiracy of the Japanese was really a roller coaster ride.
It was a fun ride, with a lots of Maths, cryptology, riddles, conspiracy and gold. The author has done brilliant job to keep all the story progressing and clicking at some point of time and by the end of the time everything falls in a place to complete the jigsaw puzzle. There were still some lose ends which I wished he would have explained more. But the story never loses its pace and remains interesting enough to keep reader engaged with the story.
The ending was a little incomplete for me and I wasn’t satisfied but it worked. I guess a better closure would have been good.
Rating: 4.5/5
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