Murakami is a very, very good writer. There’s no two ways about it. And while I enjoyed this book a great deal, I think I would have enjoyed it a bit more if I hadn’t had a basic understanding of cryptography (the science of making and breaking codes).
With most reasonably good science fiction you get good science and decent fiction. In this book, you get some really, really good fiction and some really, really silly science. Even with what little I know, the passages on cryptography on display here just don’t make a lick of sense. And, it doesn’t help that most of them are delivered via the dialogue of what has to be one of literature’s most annoying scientists.
Still, great book.