Rating: 
Summary: One of the best books I've ever read
Review: While starting out a little dry, it unfolds into a rich, complex, and well thought out story with well developed charecters. I had trouble putting this one down.
Rating:
Summary: Terry Pratchett meets Tom Clancy
Review: A funny and facinating adventure yarn featuring both WW-II cryptology and modern Internet adventure. This is a long, but rewarding read. Give it your time and attention, it's worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: Neal Stephenson never ceases to amaze me. This book is a very compelling read. I was a bit intimidated by the size at first, I have to admit, but once i got about 100 pages in, I couldn't put it down. I don't want to say anything more. You should see for yourself. I also recommend reading "In the beginning was the command line.." by Neal Stephenson. It is a brilliant essay about Operating Systems, politics, business and life. :)
Rating:
Summary: A classic
Review: This is one of those books that takes a while to get fully immersed in as it has many, many characters and plots spun across the present and WWII. However as you read more and more of it, the various plots and characters become completely engrossing and you're all done. Next thing you know, it's 3am and you have to force yourself to stop reading in order to be functional the next day. And you've got half the book to go. At least, that's the kind of the book it was for me. It's the got the complex plot and intrigues of a Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum book, only without the macho 'man against world' protagonists their works suffer from.
Rating: 
Summary: Save a few trees
Review: As many other reviewers have noted, this book is very long. Unfortunately it is long because of the author's self indulgent tangents, not because of character and plot development (like Shogun).When the author kept to the topic, the book was interesting and well written. At half the length it would have been a much better book.
Rating: 
Summary: All This And World War Two
Review: Friends,
This is the weirdest World War II
book imaginable. This is the most
fun math novel I could imagine.
As if... a fun novel could
ever exist about math.
This is a book written to
Make You Have Fun!
This book is a Party, and
you dear reader are
happily invited.
This book is similar to
Bach the musical composer sitting down
with you for a little
private concert in the grandest
cathedral, while he plays
his latest tunes, on a gigantic
church organ.
Neal Stephenson gives you,
in no exact order:
The history of World War II.
The history of cryptography[secret codes].
All the really cool ideas about computers
for the last 70 years, and
The ultimate conspiracy "history" of
Nazi and Japanese war-machines.
The "problem" with Mr. Stephenson
is that he tells five,six,seven
story-lines at once, whilst
he adroitly, selectively
disrobes his exposition
with thrilling skill. For example:
-Sergeant[both hero,and addict] Doug Shaftoe,
searching for a purple bottle
of morphium[morphine]inside a
beached U-boot full of
noxious sewer-swill and
glittering Nazi gold bars,
whilst the lurking Nazi U-boats
may sink Shaftoe on this boat-
is just one instance of this skill,
amongst fifty other brilliant moments
of skilled writing.[Of course
the book makes this brilliance happen,
as I don't]
Neal Stephenson keeps this
"plotline" always "Hot",
i.e. not safe-to-touch.
An electrician never knows
what piece of equipment is
fatal[Hot]. Or what is "safe".
Therefore all are assumed
fatal.
Neal S. elicits this
feeling in you the reader:
Don't touch, what you don't
understand.
And Yet....
This is a mass-media novel.
Brilliant.
A good work of writing,
with skill and humor.
The final novel on
World War Two?
In sum,
I Love this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Paid by the word
Review: The book was terribly long and boring. The author obviously is paid by the word. I regularly skipped 2-4 pages out of 10. So, roughly 500 of 1100 pages were useless description and digressions that did nothing to further the plot or characterization. I'm sorry I spent 8 bucks.
Rating:
Summary: A book worthy of praise
Review: Let me start by saying that this wasn't the book that I was expecting it to be. While that may be the case, it was indeed a very, very good book, and I think it probably turned out better than what I had expected.
By the title alone, one could be lead to believe that the entire book centers around cryptography. This isn't quite the case, though it is a major part of the book. In truth, it's more of a tale about a small group of people during world war two, and the way the lives of their descendants later on cross paths with the history of their relatives. Each generation it's own cryptological problems, though, as well as groups of people attempting to stop them from their goals. As such, it's not overly topheavy with cryptology-related facts that might bore most readers. This isn't to say there is none at all for those who are interested in such things. One part of the book revolves around a rather clever cryptosystem based around a pack of cards. Much to my delight, this system was described in detail in an appendix by none other than Bruce Schneier, a name that cryptography enthusiasts everywhere will no doubt recognize. The tale unfolded at a good pace, though the page count might lead you to think otherwise. It was a very lengthy book, but that only gave me all that much more time to enjoy it. The length is reasonable when you consider that the book is really the stories of two different groups of people in two different times, each one having a story that was possibly worthy of a book by itself. On the whole, I'd rank it among the best books I've ever read. After a glance at the other reviews on this page, I don't seem to be alone in that ruling.
Rating:
Summary: Multi-threaded masterpiece
Review: Cryptonomicon is a fascinating and fantastic work. As most of the reviewers here have pointed out, the novel has a richness that is both a treat and a challenge to the reader. Even the passages (some pretty long!) that pertain to technical issues are generally readable (you don't have to get *all* the details to catch the significant plot points). Stephenson interweaves the episodes from the two timelines (WW II and contemporary) until the reader sees more and more connections. I understand why some reviewers did not like the ending. Without committing the reviewer's cardinal sin of giving away major plot points (please, people, these reviews are mostly read by folks trying to decide whether to read the book; don't spoil the fun for them!), I'd say Stephenson's resolution of the plot(s) is just about right. It would have been a bit too pat and artificial for each loose end to be tied up in a neat little bow and "they all lived happily ever after". Yes, he doesn't tell us everything about the mysterious Enoch Root (and I definitely wanted to know more). Did the renegade U-boat captain cheat death? Readers can disagree because the author does not explicitly tell us. However, we get to the end of the race to Golgotha and we know who outwitted whom in the final crunch. If Stephenson chooses to write a separate novel on whether the protagonists are ultimately successful with their digital money/data haven/communications venture/business/scheme, I will want to read it, but Cryptonomicon reached a major resolution point, a moment at which the surviving characters of the contemporary plot line must now decide what to do next. When compared to the strengths of this novel, the weaknesses are insignificant -- and sometimes unavoidable. Amy Shaftoe is the only major female character we get to know more than slightly. However, the WW II plot line occurs in the ranks of the military, the huts of the codebreakers, and aboard ships and U-boats; women were absent or relegated to subsidiary roles in these environments. The contemporary plot line offered Stephenson more opportunity for interesting female players, but their actual presence in the ranks of nerds, geeks, and hackers is similarly limited. If the author had gone out of his way to "fix" this problem, the novel would have had even greater anachronisms than the occasional distraction of WW II participants talking like people from the 1990s. Bottom line: An excellent, entertaining, enormous novel that will almost certainly reward a second reading. How rare is that?
Rating:
Summary: A cyberpunk and WWII war story smashed into one
Review: I don't usually place much weight into the book reviews publishers tag on back covers, but the review on this book really does describe it - this book is Tom Clancy mated with William Gibson with James Mitchner acting as a midwife. Even though this book is an astounding 1200+ pages, it is an engrossing read. Like Mitchner, the story weaves the lives of many generations together through a common theme. Except Mitchner never wrote about lives so exciting (Apologies to any Mitchner fans - but Hawaii was a little dull.) There are many character threads and stories in the book, but the two main ones are the story of a WWII cryptographer (Clancy style), and the story of his Silicon Valley grandson's pursuit of an offshore data center and advanced cryptography (Gibson style). Both threads are thoroughly engrossing. The book paces perfectly, it never gets too frentic or too dull. The character development is also done very well - Stevenson doesn't clutter the book with too many marginal characters besides his main ones and he makes most the characters very memorable. This leaves him lots of time to develop his main characters into complex and interesting people. Stevenson's writing style is also very readable, yet not as flat as the standard supermarket fiction (or bad sci-fi for that matter). The different story threads are written in a different tone, and Stevenson uses his command of tone to provide even more character and plot development. For example, his savant WWI cryptographer thinks in mathmatical proofs, his modern-day cyberpunk in Tolkein-inspired metaphors.
If I had a complaint about this book (I don't have many) it is that the ending leaves a little to be desired. I won't give anything away, but my overall impression with the last 200 or so pages of the book was that Stevenson got tired and just started typing out some text to finish the thing up. It's not a complete breakdown, but compared to the rest of the book it is a weak showing. Regardless, I still highly recommend this book to any cyberpunk fans, war story fans, or math geeks.
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