Rating: 
Summary: Really great novel
Review: I won't type up an extensive review here, but anyone who enjoys cryptographic issues and/or WWII history and/or N. Stepehenson's other work, will *love* this book. Almost all of it was brilliantly concieved and executed. Sure, as with anything there are flaws, but I really enjoyed this, much more so than Snow Crash.
Rating: 
Summary: Is there an Editor in the house?
Review: Although this book's premise is engaging I find wading through his murky prose at times unbearable. His style often makes me think he gets paid by the word. He remains a writer in desperate need of a editor. Also there are typos in the book a spell checker would catch.
Rating:
Summary: Loved every word on each of 914 pages!
Review: A book I sincerely didn't want to end. Although some of the criticism is appropriate in the various reviews, I found the characters accurate and interesting, especially Bobby Shaftoe, Elijah Root and Alan Turing. The book is filled with lovely historical details - I'm sure I missed most of them. This story holds out truly realistic hope for freedom in our world that is, in fact, without much brightness otherwise. Helps if you find crypto interesting, of course. Afterward by Bruce Schneier! Real, REAL crypto guru.
Rating:
Summary: excellent work, but not as good as Snow Crash
Review: I enjoyed the work immensely, and I find some of the criticisms in of the book to be puzzling. For instance, one reviewer admonishes the fact checking of the book, declaring that the S.A.S. didn't exist as part of the British military during W.W.II. Well, of course it did, so perhaps a return to the history book would do themselves some good. Don't take too much stock in the poo pooers, if you want an intelligent and enthralling tale, it's worth the effort.
Rating:
Summary: Sorry to disagree with most of you, but...
Review: I found this book very hard to get into, and in fact finally gave up on it after a very turgid 200+ pages. The author jumps from the 1940s to the 1990s at will and his characters are two dimensional and did not seem real to me. The story had to do with the creation of a "data haven" in the Phillipine Islands, but the author never fully explained the significance of a data haven or why it would be important. The editors should also do some fact checking. For example, I don't think the Special Air Service (in the British Military) existed during WWII. I had high hopes for this book as I worked in a related area while in the Air Force, but I was disappointed, and I'm afraid that many others will be as well.
Rating:
Summary: A Painful Slog
Review: Picked this up with high expectation--disappointment grew with each passing page. It was a struggle to finish this overblown exercise in irrelevant minutia--could easily have been halved. Take a pass on this one...
Rating: 
Summary: very humorous
Review: I would rate this second of Stephenson's books (although I haven't read Zodiac). Snow Crash still remains my all-time favorite sci-fi novel. Cryptonomicon though had some very humorous writing that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Rating:
Summary: Fun but flawed
Review: As usual, I like the things that are controversial. What is great about this novel is obvious: it's a great deal of fun. Stephenson can write, and he can captivate. I think some things are being missed in these reviews, though: he is a capitalist, male-chauvinist, culturally ethnocentric pig. Or, at least, the protagonist is all of these things and Mr. Stephenson writes so intimately about him, it's hard to imagine him being anything else. However, if you can get past this, the long pages fly by almost too quickly. Despite him representing everything I hate philosophically, I can't wait for the next volume (tome) to come out. Get out of your shell, Mr. Stephenson, and imagine what life would be like if you weren't rich. Maybe you should spend some time in the woods in a survivalist situation. It could open your mind a bit.
Rating: 
Summary: Why Won't Anybody EDIT This Author?
Review: Why won't anybody EDIT Neal Stephenson? I slogged my way through Cryptonomicon, but great stretches reminded me of the unnatural and inspiration-sapping effort of walking on loose beach sand -- and in this case, it's a very, very long beach. Much of what writers do may indeed be -- as in Norman Mailer's famous and insightful phrase (based on alert vivisection of the the authorial ego) -- "advertisements for myself." But the advertisements do not have to be, as in this latest novel by Stephenson, so tiresome, tedious, and self-indulgent; so merely (but often barely) clever; so suffused with the feeling of family anecdotes; so LONG, LOOSE, AND LIMP. None of these matters is fatal in itself. Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward, Angel; Of Time and the River; You Can't Go Home Again) showed that even a great talent NEEDS A GOOD EDITOR -- to keep him from over-enchantment with himself; to keep him focused, moving forward, and polished; to tell him, time and time and time again, what to SKIP, SCRAP, OR JUST PLAIN "FERGIT ABOUT"! Good as Stephenson's Snowcrash was, and later The Diamond Age (and before all of that, The Zodiac --probably the one single novel Stephenson, by himself, sans editeurs, might actually be said to "have in him" -- as we are all, dubiously, I think, said to "have" one in us, like a pregnancy), he clearly does not intend to rest his case as a novelist on the oeuvre of those novels. He is pushing on. But I suspect those earlier novels, being written by a man with less fame and clout than Stephenson today -- got the type and intensity of editorial attention that his sort of writing requires -- and deserves. Given his newest achievement, the massive maundering work we have before us in Cryptonomicon, there is little doubt that Stephenson has indeed pushed on in at least one direction -- in having mastered the art of giving editors and their intrusive attentions the slip! Cyptonomicon, for Stephenson, bears lamentable comparison to Tom Clancy's Patriot Games, also a "chatty," undisciplined, anecdotally self-absorbed book pursued to wearisome lengths. Clancy has since done better (but his earliest and best novel -- The Hunt for Red October -- was heavily edited; and slim). For Stephenson -- maybe next time, eh?
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding, resonates with math-nerds and non-nerds alike
Review: I felt that with "Cryptonomicon," Stephenson took a quantum leap forward in the quality of his writing. In terms of quality of ideas, "The Diamond Age" was quite good, but in terms of readibility, it tended to bog down. "Zodiac" was extremely well-written and had a puckish quality, but it was not as intricate as the other works. "Snow Crash" comes the closest to "Cryptonomicon," but I personally found the math-encryption angle of "Crypotonomicon" more compelling than the Sumerian mythology of "Snow Crash." The amazing thing about "Cryptonomicon" is how much of a rewrite of U.S. history from pre-World World Two through the present Stephenson has managed to do. Stephenson's attention to detail pays off here; terms such as "fractally weird" are inspired brilliance and stay in the mind long after reading them.
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