Neal stephenson comes up with brilliant, exquisitely-detailed worlds. After a brilliant set-up, it feels as if stephenson needed a tidy and action-packed ending, but it didn't quite fit. Stephenson is absolutely not for everyone - but he is the perfec...  Read More

The author has a big and varied imagination and his writing is always thoughtful and quietly humorous without the hysterics many impart to action scenes. The book gives me the same feeling as jazz or progressive rock - that there's a coherent pattern ...  Read More

The characters are believable even if the vehicle of this novel is trippingly not. The main characters belong to the vickies who model their society - even their dress - after the victorian era and are the world's goody-two-shoes to the extreme. There...  Read More

The diamond age is a stupendous piece of immersive sf, for the reader with the circuitry to handle it. It's worth another read since we've made a little more progress (or regress depending on your perspective) toward the societal structure.

Dickens' little nell finds companionship and valuable knowledge from the young lady's illustrated primer. In the diamond age, nell gains an education and enlightenment; in the lonesome gods, johannes does too. Nell's journey is delightful as nell beco...  Read More

One of the biggest sins of the book is the lack of action by nell. The characters are lifeless, and i couldn't find myself caring one * about any of them. The motivations of the characters we are being told about remain questionable if they are there ...  Read More

The fist uprising and the mouse army all on the loose with none of this supposedly god-like nanotech doing a thing about it. While stephenson has some interesting ideas here and there, i found most of his applications of nano-technology to be ridiculo...  Read More

Fighting bullies, abusers, and sadists is good, but really not all that good. Some section of the novel about violence on children are in really bad taste and it can even be defined as borderline *.