Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating and compeling
Review: Reading the first few chapters (66 printed pages) online...Iwas engrossed, unable to move, unwilling to break for any desire or need. Neal is pulling together across generations a story that contrasts the differences and brings to surface the shifts between those generations. Deeply technical without necessitating technical understanding, Neal brings a light to the technological and the people that practice it that is only paralleled in Tom Clancy's ability to make military arcana understandable to people outside that circle.The reader is drawn into the singular focus and numbing concentration of deeply creative people. The author brings light into the creative process that consumes all outside stimula that so frightens people who cannot see beyond the fogged eyes and distant presence. The stories shifts are a bit rough, but they are a continuation of the author's style of charater jumping exhibited in his earlier books. He tends to play these jumps very well, building up scenes strongly, and then changing channels to build each character's path in parallel. I am quite excited and cannot wait to receive my full printed copy.
Rating:
Summary: A behemoth and a wild ride
Review: I was excited to pick up this book because it was on a subject right up my alley - encryption. Throw in the fact that it has a lot of WWII action in there and I was sure it was a winner.
The book is a winner in many respects but I found myself wanting to read more about the WWII characters than the modern ones. The story jumps around a lot, back to WWII and to the modern age with the common thread of encryption saving the world (in WWII) and conquering the world, at least fiscally, in the modern day.
I thought the actions and theory behind the modern part of the story were a bit of a stretch. Yes, this is a work of fiction, but I like my fiction to be believable! Stephenson goes into a bit of economic theory to support how his modern concept could work (don't want to spoil anything), but I just didn't buy it.
Maybe that's where Stephenson went wrong for me. This is a huge book - well over 1000 pages, but the story winds and wanders all over the place going in detail into encryption theory, economic theory, theoretical math - great stuff for a geek like me but it was tough to stick to a story line when all this subjects had to be explained. Perhaps the author should have assumed his reader was a bit more intelligent and then he wouldn't have had to delve into all these explanations.
Still, I give the book 4 out of 5 stars. It was a pretty good book, pretty overwhelming too - but that can be a good thing.
Rating:
Summary: a big, brilliant, geeky book
Review: Composed of three - at times four, even five - plotlines, each with its own narrator; spanning sixty years and told in two distinct time frames; exploring naval warfare, cryptology, the psychology of geeks, and Greek mythology; topping eleven hundred pages in length - this is not a novel for the faint-hearted. It's long and impressively - even confusingly - complex, and sometimes the reading is a bit of a slog. But the stories are intricately interwoven and surprisingly funny; the characters are unique, believable, and memorable; the digressions into science, religion, and everything else are knowledgeable and clearly presented - on the whole this is a very enjoyable read. Totally worth the investment.
Rating: 
Summary: War and Peace for the late 20th Century!
Review: The erudition and information in this book are humbling. Wait, wait! It also has humor, tragedy, war, romance, a bit of sex, intrigue, a treasure hunt, famous historical characters, and a whole bunch of other things---truly the complete range of human experience, across two generations of families. One of my more unusual tests for a book is its ability to keep me interested if I have to leave it for awhile. Well, I read Cryptonomicon over a period of more than 3 months, and even if I stopped reading for a week at the end of a paragraph (much less a section or chapter), I found I could return to it easily without losing the many threads of the story---minimal paging back to refresh my memory. In a book of this magnitude and complexity, that is a rare, perhaps unique compliment. I admit readily that it isn't fair to do this to a book, but sometimes stuff happens. The author even enlightened me about a personal character trait! That isn't something one expects in a work of fiction. On the minimal downside, Stephenson is so knowledgeable about technical matters that he devotes some space to theories, graphs, computer programs, and the like. The good news about this is that all of it is relevant to the story. The bad news is that I couldn't begin to repeat much of it after reading it. My best advice would be to read those sections several times, as I did, trying for a basic understanding of the concepts. Going to either extreme (skipping them entirely or getting bogged down in them or, horrors, quitting the book in frustration) is not advised!! Cryptonomicon ends with a brief excerpt from Quicksilver, the first book in a new trilogy. Stephenson has me intrigued already, and I eagerly await reading all of his other works.
Rating:
Summary: Out of Control!
Review: What do Ronald Reagan, the Nazi Enigma Code, Captain Crunch cereal, and Internet Privacy all have in common? Cryptonomicon. Neal Stephenson weaves a fantastic web of connections until the reader begins to suspect that all things are related, if only one knows where to look. Cryptonomicon is fairly brimming with useful advice. Thinking about dating the daughter of a homicidal ex-Navy Seal? It's in the book. Have you suddenly found yourself doing business with a lawsuit-happy dentist with masochistic streak? It's in here. Need to know the optimum procedure for eating Captain Crunch cereal? How about the Cartesian parking lot method of dividing family treasures, or tips on using heavy gauge pseudo-antique furniture to revitalize your love life? It's all in here. This book is fun, informative, irreverent, and fascinating. What more can a reader ask?
Jeff Edwards, author of "Torpedo: A Surface Warfare Thriller"
Rating:
Summary: ...
Review: Cryptonomicon had a big chance of failing. It's a large book, over 1000 pages, which continually bounces between WWII and "present day" while juggling between several main characters. Not to mention the frequent several page rants Stephenson would engage in that simply inform the reader about... well, stuff. It's a recipe for disaster, and according to many of the reviewers it did.
What saved the book for me was how well Stephenson keeps things moving. Each chapter is focused on one of the main characters (Waterhouse of WWII, Randy Waterhouse of present, Shaftoe WWII, and Goto Dengo of WWII) so you are constantly switching between eras and plots. Just when you think you're going to scream if you have to read about another sunken U boat, you get a chapter on cryptic annalysis. This allowed me to plow through good portions of the book in a single sitting.
Perhaps the feature that would deter most readers is the Stephenson's fondness for large, technical descriptions of... everything. And while some authors might BS a lot, judging from the reviews here, most of the stuff Stephenson informs us on is on target. These descriptions facinated me... however, I could see how a lot of audiences would find them to be a bore.
The characters are well written, although the plot is questionable. The ending suggested by the beginning of the book is hardly the one that ends up transpiring. It felt like the book could have gone on for another 500 pages.
Rating: 
Summary: Good intro to characters from Baroque Cycle
Review: Waterhouse, Shaftoe & Comstock are all here in the 20th century.
Shaftoe sections are exciting, Waterhouse fairly painful and long long long.
Good for long cruises.
Rating:
Summary: On my current all time "top three list".
Review: I felt compelled to write since I am only woman I know who has read this book. My husband nagged me forever to read it, and around Thanksgiving I was looking for a long, meaty book. Boy, this was it in spades!
First of all, I adored this book. I found it brilliant and profound. The people who see this book as only technically advanced have missed its real brilliance. Some of the most vivid and touching characters in fiction live in the pages of this amazing book. I could easily see this book made into a BBC series. Actors would have a field day with Bobby Shaftoe, Lawrence Waterhouse, Amy Shaftoe and Goto Dengo, to name a few. The way Amy and Randy come to trust each other had real resonance for me (see section on Love and Teeth!) The characters here breathe. There is hacker social ineptitude, academic pomposity, real brilliance, not to mention Love and War over 50 years!
I love the way Neal Stephenson writes (I am reading "Quicksilver" now). Say you view reality as being one big cube and you can only see one face of the cube. When you read Stephenson (for me, at least), it's like having the cube rotated so that you can see more of it. Pretty potent stuff. Also, I have a science background (you might have guessed) but Stephenson has this way of explaining things that is so basic that you can see outside box, too!
Finally, Stephenson has taken heat for his abrupt endings. When I finished Cryptonomicon I found that all the ends did ties together when I mulled it over for a while.
Rating:
Summary: Loved It!
Review: Yep, It's long.
Not everyone will love it; not a problem.
Dan Brown? Too simple, transparent, obvious . . .
I hated finishing the book, I felt like I was letting go of something that had come to mean a lot to me.
I have passed my copy of the book to 4 friends already,
every one of them has felt similarly.
Great Job, Neal!
Rating:
Summary: A must read
Review: I was turned onto this book through a friend and happy I received the recomendation. I loved every page and am looking forward to reading others by Neal Stephenson.
Best Part: Trip report/reimbursement form. (If you have read the book I know you know what I mean abd if you have not I am betting you will openly laugh at this).
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