My only concern is the following:
I've never read Neal Stephenson (shame on me), but what I've heard about him always made me intrigueded, and I would like to start reading his work picking up Anathem. However, there's something I can't really figure out from many people's opinions. Is the author overly descriptive? Are his works... bloated?
When you talk about a steep curve, do you mean complexity of the theme, or is it because the author makes long, boring infodumps?
I've always liked long books, and science is my field. The only thing I don't like is when an author uses 3 pages to say what could be written in one setence (like that author Ricardo Pinto, who could use 3 pages to describe a backyard and another 5 describing the garden and another 10 to describe a house... all that in the middle of a police chase) (i'm inventing that, it's just to show you my point
).