Negative Positive
Title: Convoluted, complex ,hard to follow, frustrating.
Review: You need to pass an exam to read this book. Do you intimately know the personality of Nevil Maskelyne? The fights within the British Astronomical Society over methods of computing longitude? The political affiliations of the various members? Who in the astronomy community had "pull" from what powerful politicians? What the religious speculations of these astronomers might have been? If not, you will find much of this book incomprehensible, as a great deal of it consists of Pynchon's pages long 'dialogues' purporting to show the mental activities of his characters about these issues. It's like trying to follow barroom conversations from another planet.Once in a while you get the hang if it--more often, you just feel like hanging up the book. If you don't have a high frustration tolerance, pass on this one.
Is the review positive or negative? 