Dense and Poetic
Okay, it's like this: You're not going to tear through Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. It's not going to grab you with its runaway plot and keep you breathless with anticipation, and chances are decent that you'll have to read a number of pages a number of times. There's a lot of science, and approximately eleven billion quotations of scientists. Like here:
The Principle of Indeterminacy turned science inside out. Suddenly determinism goes, causality goes, and we are left with a universe composed of what Eddington calls, "mind-stuff." Listen to these physicists: Sir James Jeans, Eddington's successor, invokes "fate," saying that the future "may rest on the knees of whatever gods there be." (11.65)
Yeah…light reading this is not. To really follow along, be prepared to Google like a fool. But the poetry of the language is worth it:
Here was a new light on the intricate texture of things in the world, the actual plot of the present moment in time after the fall: the way we the living are nibbled and nibbling—not held aloft on a cloud in the air but bumbling pitted and scarred and broken through a frayed and beautiful land. (13.16)
It's a way more beautiful way of saying humans and the earth are wounded, right? Even though it's wordy, there's not an unconsidered word in the mix. The writing style reflects the content. This is someone who's looking at and thinking about nature and is awed by its intricacy. In turn, she builds intricate—and awe-filled—sentences to show us what she sees.