Rating: 
Summary: where are the good editors?
Review: If you can slog through the verbosity, it is possible to mine some very good fiction out of the messy slag pile of this over-written over-indulgent under-edited book. Why do we have to do the work of the publisher?
Rating: 
Summary: Great Read
Review: This was my first Stephenson book and I'm happy that it introduced me to such a consistent author (at least in terms of readability and entertainment). Although the book is war and peace lengthy, it never feels that way (i.e. you never get any of the preface-materials-interrupting-glorious-story that are tolstoy's dissertations on keeping history, etc...), and it's a pretty breezy read. The writing seems intelligent without any of the over-the-top-pseudo-scientific-babble common to really bad science-fiction books (not that i don't love pseudo-science...). Thoroughly entertaining and not in an entirely hollow way.Also, anyone formulating expectations for what the exeprience of reading this book will be like should take pains to ignore any comparison (favourable or not) to gravity's rainbow. Most of these critics who are saying cryptonomicon is like gravity's rainbow probably havn't read either and are simply good at clasifying lengthy... probably the same people who consistently have promo quotes on tom clancy jackets. Distinct both narratively and stylisticly, if the two books have anything in common it's the gleeful absurdity (that in my limited reading, seems) common to the cyberpunk/sci-fi genre. Read both, don't let comparisons stop you from reading either (especially if you've read or tried reading gravity's rainbow... cryptonomicon is an "easy" read... especially compared to pynchon).
Rating: 
Summary: Whoa.
Review: Heavy going in places (hint: skip the maths bits if you find them a bit tricky, because they don't add a lot to the story) but fundamentally absorbing and entertaining. Not quite a masterpiece, but a class effort nonetheless.
Rating: 
Summary: No "Gravity's Rainbow"
Review: I believe they call this "hysterical fiction" nowadays-- literature so beefed up with detail and plot intrigue as to offer some source of verisimilitude... however the merit in this type of literature starts with William Gaddis, then Pynchon, and finally David Foster Wallace. The point is those guys are hard to read, and the books are long so you as a reader can work through them with a concentration that's due to real art. Stephenson, however, is a hack, and is one tier above grocery store fiction. I read 50 pages of this book and put it down when i realized it is terrible writing. Don't waste your life on a book that doesn't pay off at all.
Rating:
Summary: Best Hacker-SciFi I have read
Review: At first I was daunted by the 900+ page book. Books this size tend to be a chore to read through, ala Infinite Jest. No so for this book. If you live in San Jose and/or are a programmer, this will resonate with you. Stephenson understands our culture. It is also structurally rich, with parallels to the WWII generation. Also, it contains one of the shortest sex scenes in all of literature, outside of Thomas Hardy.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant but flawed
Review: ...This book is definitely fascinating enough to be worth a read, but by no means is it a literary masterpiece nor is it fully succesful as a work of art. Pros
*Readable, absorbing accounts of cryptography, mathematics, computer geeks and various technical topics. This is what makes Stephenson stand out. I am a computer scientist, and I found his description of technical concepts to be highly accurate. *Great, complicated plot that keeps you turning the pages right up to page 910. Stephenson is great at descriptions and gives interesting information about U-boats, World War II, the Philippines, Greek mythology, academic culture, oral surgery and much more. Cons
* The parts do not add up to a comprehensive whole. There are many interesting bits, but I was not left with anything to chew on at the end of it all. I was looking for some underlying themes or unifying ideas and I didn't find them. *Shallow character development. Apart from Randy Waterhouse, we gain very little insight into the character's thinking. Thus, it is difficult to engage with them and to really care about what they are going through. In particular, the relationship between Randy and his romantic interest is poorly developed and doesn't feel natural at all. *Poor ending. The ending feels like Stephenson has ran out of stuff to write and just decided to end it there. This novel is a cut above the John Grisham stuff, but it does not attain the level of literary fiction, despite strenuous attempts by Stephenson. He has a great knack for plotting and vivid descriptions, but he needs to work on presenting a unified artistic vision and creating characters that the reader can actually care about if he wants to fulfill his artistic ambitions.
Rating:
Summary: Great book, a little too long
Review: This is a great book and was very enjoyable to read, a real page-turner like a good Clancy or King book that you can't put down. However, at around page 500, I just wanted this book to be over. I really wanted to find out how the story ends and find out what happened to the characters, otherwise I probably would have stopped reading the book (which I'm glad I did), but in the middle of the book it seemed more like the quest for the Holy Grail than a book. The details in the book are amazing, Stephenson's sure done his research. Most sci-fi books are lite on true facts, just throwing in mumbo-jumbo to make it sound techie, but this book has the technical details right!
Rating:
Summary: ultra chilled Cap'n Crunch
Review: Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is everything but science fiction, but it somehow has a science fiction feel to it. Perhaps this is because Stephenson constantly alternates narrative between the past (WWII) and the present - also the fact that the story focuses on the nature of information technology and how information can impact human lives and world events over time and distance. The cryptography in this book alone is enough to blow your mind - add to that a layed back, ultra cool marine in WW2, an absent minded pipe organ player, a computer programmer with an unusual family, and one of the coolest treasure hunting chicks ever conceived. At times, this story does give you the head-spins due to an "all over the place" storyline, but still it gets five stars for sheer magnitude...
Rating:
Summary: Truly Brilliant and Hilarious
Review: Both the present day and WW2 stories in this novel are brilliant and hilarious. Bobby Shaftoe obsesses on how a Komodo Dragon saved him from a Japanese Pillbox while high on morphine horrifying all he comes in contact with. In present day Seattle, poor Daniel Waterhouse is humiliated when the girl he is courting is forced to watch his math/science geek family divide up a deceased relatives possessions by charting them in a parking lot with the x axis being their monetary value and the y axis their sentimental value. A discussion of what makes an oral surgeon truly brilliant had me in stitches. You have to read it to believe it. I found Snow Crash to be interesting but also far-fetched, this is a wonderful historical epic that had me thinking and laughing on every page. I beg you to read it.
Rating:
Summary: An engrossing, exciting, epic journey into a brick wall
Review: The middle-brows and genre lovers occasionally try to hoist one of the more impressive examples of their world up into the complex, literary sphere, invariably referring to whichever book it is as 'Pynchon, only funnier', 'with passages rivalling Delillo', or 'contains a vision as complete as Joyce or Shakespeare'. These twee remarks are never true. 'The Lord of the Rings' has been elevated in such a way, as has 'Dune' and 'Foundation'. Cryptonomicon, while being a brilliant novel with a plot of rare density and excitement, falls into this category. It has its cult status and biblical praise, but in truth it is little more than the sum of its parts.
What Cryptonomicon has is a highly impressive, multilayered plot whose various strands move along with a laudable level of mystique, violence, and humour. You begin with three mathematicians cycling in the woods and progress into an ever-increasing and ever-engrossing plotline which takes you from modern-day computer geekdom and the legal murk of cunning business deals back and forth through the entire span of World War 2, following an army sargeant and an eccentric, code-breaking genius along their independent, but occasionally intertwined, journey into one hell of a mystery.
The main characters and the hypnotic plot are what recommend this novel. The genius code-breaker is a man of weird fascinations and his askew view of the world is consistently kept. Shaftoe, the army sargeant, is a dry and self-reliant Vonnegutesque non-hero whose inability to get too wound up by the often ferocious events surrounding him grounds the war elements in a believeable reality. Enoch Root, an officer and a cleric, is a semi-mystic who resembles the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland - another interesting character. The book's plot is colossal and, while it stays in the WW2 plotline, is never boring. New threads are added unexpectedly and Stephenson rarely lets anything dangle or become moot, though when he does it serves as a cancer on a large part of the novel. I will explain later.
The book is both aided and hindered by the writing. By and large, the book is written adequately with frequent moments of real wit. Stephenson can imbue a moment with real wonder and can create large theatres of action wherein nuances are paid attention to as well. This doesn't happen enough, though. There are sections that are written bluntly, coarsely, and without imagination. They do not belong in a book of this ambition and weaken the power which had previous being building. There are sections, most often in the contemporary plotline, which drag along blandly and add nothing to the experience but time.
The worst offence of all in this book is the ending. The World War 2 plotlines end well and set up what the reader expects to be a profound climax. No such thing occurs. A very important antagonist is done away with out of the blue in less than a page, ending a plotline which was promising to be a razor-edge, all-or-nothing climax for the computer geeks and their impossibly grand scheme. A complex antecedent plot regarding a data haven near the Philippines becomes a predicate plot about a hunt for Nazi gold. A terrible amount of anticipation fizzles out in the transition. One is led to believe this gold will finance the data haven, but it's all left unsaid in a quick and painful wrap-up.
The ending stinks and makes one believe Stephenson was either told to end it as quickly as possible for publishing reasons or he tired of the whole thing and, instead of hiding this from his readership and pushing on, thus saving the novel, he gave in and ended it all in a way not a million miles away from 'He woke up and it was all a dream'.
Nevertheless, this novel is, in the final analysis, an interesting novel with heaps of code-history and thought-provoking discussions, such as the conversation about Ares and Athena being complex metaphors for different approaches to war. Read it, enjoy it, bite your tongue when it drags, read the ending near a punching-bag, for the vast majority of the book is damn fine fare.
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