Rating: 
Summary: Typical Neal
Review: I enjoyed this book tremendously. As usual, Neal Stephenson has served a delightful mix of technology and speculation that ties in with a slightly off-center cast to make a highly entertaining story. However, it suffers from the problem that much of his work does. The ending is abrupt, although not to the same extent as The Diamond Age. If the finish was executed better, this would be 5 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Novel digresses a lot, but still gripped me
Review: Get this: The Allied Powers in World War II had cracked both the German and Japanese codes and had tons of information about Axis troop movements, but the Allies HAD to use the information judiciously so as to not make it completely obvious that the codes had been broken (as they would then be replaced with even stronger codes). The Allies' efforts to conceal their knowledge of the broken codes is the most interesting part in "Cryptonomicon", a novel which follows four different characters (three during World War II, one in present-day time). The novel continually cuts between the four threads, usually with a little cliffhanger at the end of each chapter before jumping to another storyline. I found this cliffhangerism somewhat irritating, but I guess in a 900-page book you have to manufacture some suspense to keep the pages turning. The plot lines range from somewhat interesting to completely gripping, though, so while I always hated to leave one, I was usually glad to rejoin another.There are a lot of little side stories that the author tells as well; a five-page dissertation on eating cereal and a series of graphs plotting one character's productivity versus the time since his last orgasm are my favorites. I can see why these digressions bugged some readers, as it takes some of the steam out of the plot when the novel takes these interesting but random leaps, but I thought they were entertaining and the narrative is all chopped up and blended anyway with different plot lines. Neal Stephenson is clearly well-versed in information theory, war history, computer network security, the perils of starting a new company in the 1990's, and lots of other esoterica that he displays throughout the book. I enjoyed the holding forth on various topics, but then again I'm a computer scientist who studied information theory. I think readers who aren't fascinated by network security or explanations of code-breaking techniques can safely skim over those bits and get back to the meat of the plot, however. Some bits of the book are a little too cute, for instance many of the characters in the present-day plot thread are descendants of the characters in the World War II threads. Also, the present-day protagonist, a network hacker named Randy, spends the whole book wooing what I would call the discerning hacker's dream woman: a fiercely independent and no-nonsense professional scuba diver. Why this selective and ambitious woman would fall for Randy is not quite clear to me (but maybe that's just self-loathing talking, since I can identify with Randy to some extent). My only other complaint is that the author tries to answer critics of the Internet by setting up a straw man, a fatuous Finnish professor, whose glib criticisms are easily refuted by Randy. The Finnish professor and Randy's ex-girlfriend are examples of overly politically correct academics who deserve to be mocked; I just thought that their characters were such caricatures that it makes Stephenson's attempt at satirizing them seem rather too blunt. On the whole though, I completely enjoyed the book and read it voraciously for a couple weeks. Stephenson comes up with many original and sometimes even absurd concepts in the novel, and I was always interested in reaching the next page to see what he would say next.
Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating Read!!
Review: This book will satisfy every type of reader,from the historical fiction fan to the science fiction fan to the corporate drone who likes to dream. It is a book that spans half a century, from Japan in WWII to to the Phillipines today. It is a romance, an epic, a war story,and a business story.
I have two critiques to make about it, however. It instoduces a fascinating female character who is plenty strong, then undermines her and makes her as weak as stereotypes would dictate.
The ending is open, and makes me wonder what either possibility means.
That's it. Otherwise, it is interesting, captivating, and worth buying.
Rating: 
Summary: Ugh. What a waste.
Review: Based on a lot of glowing reviews on Slashdot and the e-gold mailing list, I couldn't wait to get out and buy this in hardcover right after it first came out. Boy am I sorry. This book is way WAY too long. It's too long by half at least. I don't deny that Stephenson can write, but this book seems to have been written specifically for young computer nerds who will be amused by discussions of masturbation and cereal. You get the feeling that the book was written by a young boy going through the puberty. There is nothing wrong with this (Isaac Asimov wrote the Foundation trilogy when he was 16) but you don't expect to FEEL this in a book this long or covering the material he covers. I've been a computer nerd and an avid sci-fi reader for most of my life, and cryptography etc. fascinates me a great deal. This book COULD have been really good, but it needs a great deal of "tightening up". If Neal Stephenson had forced himself to cut the book in half I have a feeling it would have been a truly great book. But it goes on and on and on and on..... From one writer to another, I suggest he spend more time tightening up his book before he publishes, and for goodness sake, have an editor read it before it goes to print! I get the feeling the book was so long neither the author or the publisher wanted to take the time to fix the zillions of mistakes, some factual some grammatical, or to refine the text. Bottom line: Don't buy this book. Borrow it from a friend or check it out from the library. If you still love it, you can have mine!
Rating:
Summary: And I bought it in hardcover!..
Review: If I wanted to know about the consistency of some nerd's soggy Captain Crunch cereal, I could observe it any day almost anywhere at breakfast. The idiosyncracies and hangups of computer professionals do not interest me. That counts out half of this heafty book's plot. The rest is quite interesting: cryptography and warfare in WWII as experienced through 2 characters that have lives instead of funky technology. Is Stephenson telling us that modern man is a boring git? In this case, keep it short and sweet, baby. No rambling. And more girly action, PLEASE. Not all computer geeks wait a year to get layed.
Rating:
Summary: I wish this was the never ending story
Review: This is one of those books that end up being so good that you don't want it to end! I have a wonderful time reading it, both for the fast paced story and the high level of detail. It will never stop to amazed you!
Rating:
Summary: Enriching and enjoyable
Review: I didn't know too much about this book before diving in, outside of what I read on the back cover. The analogies to Pynchon were what sucked me into buying it, and there are certain similarities (funky character names, strange synergies, etc.) that Pynchon fans will see. It's a quick read, though, compared to Pynchon, and doesn't have the depth of Gravity's Rainbow (and that's not necessarily a criticism). The characters, for the most part, are very nicely developed (excluding, perhaps, a priest who ends up talking like a 15-year old American boy), the ending is very satisfying, and the multiple plot lines converge and overlap in constantly enjoyable ways. All in all, a great read.
Rating: 
Summary: Seriously abridged
Review: Buyer beware! The audio version of this book, formerly prominently advertised as UNABRIDGED, is nothing of the sort. It consists of what the box calls "Unabridged Excerpts" (an oxymoron if I ever heard one), pasted together by frequent summaries of intervening plot developments. If the experience of listening to the whole long, intricately developed novel is what you're looking for, the abridgement is not for you. Be sure you know what you're buying.
Rating:
Summary: Self-Indulgence defined
Review: This is what you'd mostly likely find while looking through the stuff those monkeys are churning out in hopes of getting to the Shakespeare. Simply awful.
Rating:
Summary: A jumpy, yet brilliant tale
Review: Before I begin, I must divulge a key bit of information that may bias my review: It took me an entire year to read this epic. The novel, which spans 900+ pages, 50+ years and no less than 4 protagonists, is at times, a clumsy effort to convey various key facets of modern technology, and a disjointed effort to convey fictitious events in World War Two. At every other time, it is an absolutely brilliant work of art. The first 300 pages of the book lagged for me. It was hard to adjust to the constant shifting between protagonists, time periods, and ideas. Randy's story was uninteresting, murky, and just downright painful to read at times, in comparison the bright and exciting adventures of the characters in World War II. As a result of this story lag, I put the book down for 8 months, as I had just lost all interest in it. The book greatly picks up the pace a little over a third of the way through, and becomes incredibly hard to put down. The characters' stories interrelate constantly; creating situations that will leave the reader amazed at the correlation between each character and how closely their lives, and the lives of their closest acquaintances tie together. Stephenson does not so much illustrate some key plot points as much as he alludes to them; and this is my only major fault with the book. Some key moments are left to the imagination of the reader, which is forgivable, for each of the character's stories could be expanded into its own 900+ page novel. It's hard to get past the idea that Cryptonomicon is written for the techie crowd. But whether or not you fully understand the underlying scientific and technological aspects of the story is not important; Stephenson intends the reader to walk away with a clear picture of what the consequences of their usage is. Even disregarding the Math and Computer Science aspect, the story is full of humor and emotion that will leave a lasting impression on any reader. It's a shame about the length. At one point, I thought I would never finish it. Now I just wish there was more to read!
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