Rating: 
Summary: Dissappointing -- especially given his earlier work
Review: I actually *bought* this in hardcover -- something I don't usually do but I have very much enjoyed Stephenson's earlier work (including Interface & Cobweb under the name Stephen Bury) and thought this would be worth the clams. It's just not. I wish his editor had told him to slash 500 pages -- "just keep the 400 best, Neal" and then I wouldn't have had to sit through weird digressions that mean nothing to the plot or furniture really turn some people on. It was supposed to be a letter to Penthouse and that's just what it read like. Yawn.I reacted very badly to his stereotypes about men and women (he seems to be in the women-are-inscrutable-and-so-much-smarter-than-mere-men school of odd reverse sexism). In this world either you're a wimpy new-age sexual disappointment or a Nip-killing caveman with enough pheromones to rend a catholic high school delirious. The story pops around from WWII to the present and there are interesting bits of actual factual content around Ultra and the German Enigma engine but I found myself wishing I was either reading a straight history of Ultra or a fictional novel about something else. There's plenty of good stuff out there on WWII and it would make for more entertaining reading anyway. The underlying philosophy seems about as well thought out as the average Wired editorial - it may appeal to a bunch of socially inept webheads but to anyone who looks for something beyond drooling accounts of how much horsepower, RAM, Mips, penile inches etc. it's kinda flat and thin. Basically technology is really cool and you can make a ton of money and get babes (who of course aren't doing any of the actual technology) doing cool things. The comparisons to Tom Clancy are certainly justified. I've always thought poor Tom only had one good book in him (Hunt For Red October) and everything else was just the turgid right wing blather of someone who gets a hard on from watching military hardware. I thought Neal was better but he'll probably sell a killzillion copies of this book and we'll have to suffer through an endless parade of sequels. Just say no
Rating: 
Summary: Pleasant and light
Review: From the rave reviews I had read, I had expected a meaty, and provoking insight into the (fascinating) world of cryptography. Instead, its more of a tradtional novel w/ a crypto bent. This is not an indictment, more of a caveat. A beach read.
Rating: 
Summary: Please read Snow Crash or The Diamond Age.
Review: The ambition is admirable, but this book is more tedious than Dickens at his worst. Snow Crash is one of the great sci-fi novels of our time. This is not. Please don't waste your money or time with it.
Rating: 
Summary: Stephenson is back on form
Review: I mostly read Neal Stephenson because of the fabulous writing style he exhibited in Snow Crash and Zodiac. His descriptions are uncannily evocative and his informal, present tense prose carries one along like a fascinating conversation with a really intelligent friend. I was disapopinted with Diamond Age because he lost quite a bit of his irreverence with that effort, but he has made up his ground here. Everything one might love (or hate) about Stephenson is present in Cryptonomicon, from the wild similes to the long and convoluted digressions. And at over 900 pages, we get a heaping helping. When I read a really well written book, I am often disappointed when it is over. Here, as with Charles Dickens's novels, I am grateful for every page. If you are a fan of Stephenson's, then Cryptonomicon is a big, powerful dose of exactly what you're looking for.
Rating: 
Summary: Engaging, well-written, and very, very complex
Review: As a reader who enjoys the more involved and accomplished authors that really have a great story to tell (read: NOT Grisham or Clancy), I can highly, highly recommend this book. Stephenson is a master at spinning a dizzyingly complex yarn without losing track of the overall continuity of the book. I enjoyed the references and 'fictional biographies' some of the characters (read: Alan Turing)... vanishingly few authors can pull off this type of historical fiction, and I can recall very few recently that have other than James Ellroy ('American Tabloid') and Roger MacDonald ('Mr. Darwin's Shooter). Don't fret though, with this new book, Stephenson has joined the ranks of the masters. Cryptonomicon has a little bit of everything for everyone, from programming geeks, literature snobs (read: me), right on down to the average reader. You won't be disappointed!
Rating:
Summary: A failure of imagination, or of nerve? Maybe both.
Review: If Tom Clancy had written Cryptonomicon, it would probably be an unabashed bestseller, and we'd be marvelling at how far Clancy had come in his grasp of character and dialog. Unfortunately, Cryptonomicon was written by Neal Stephenson, the fertile mind who brought us the stunning visions of "Snow Crash" and "The Diamond Age". And fair comparison or not, Cryptonomicon just doesn't measure up. Stephenson can write competant spy thrillers -- this we know from the novels he co-wrote with his uncle and published under the "Stephen Bury" pseudonym. He also writes breezy if uninspired travelogues, as seen in Wired magazine. Cryptonomicon is a sometimes-engaging, sometimes-dreary combination of the two, with little of either the wild flights of imagination or the fully realized characters that populated his "science-fiction" works. It all starts out promisingly enough, weaving together the lives of two generations of Americans: a socially inept WWII-era cryptographer and, in the present day, his cypherpunk grandson, and their assorted friends, comrades and co-workers, some of whom are also related. Stephenson takes you through the outbreak of World War Two and the groundwork of establishing a business in an emerging pacific country, and it's all very entertaining. But somewhere along the way it starts falling apart. Plotlines are left to dangle, and characters never progress much beyond sound-bite stereotypes. A villain from the main (contemporary) character's past is one moment a hive-mind cultist and next a cunning corporate lawyer, then disappears for 600 pages only to return deus ex machina towards the very end. Along the way, there are unconvincing satires of academia (which Stephenson himself did better in "The Big U", which is not saying much), ill-conceived stabs at animating historical figures, and multipage digressions into sexual politics that read like Readers Digest Heinlein (or worse, John Varley for Dummies), and which leave the reader with the uncomfortable sensation that the author was recently dumped and has an axe to grind. Don't get me wrong -- Cryptonomicon is a fun read, and a great way to kill a weekend. When he's not veering into David Foster Wallace territory in minute descriptions of breakfast cereal, Stephenson can still write a propulsive, energetic narrative, and large sections of the book are as absorbing and entertaining as the rest of his works. It's only when taken as a whole that it seems lacking. Cryptonomicon is supposed to be the first in a series. Let us hope that the next volume finds Stephenson a little more involved with his characters... and with his editor.
Rating:
Summary: Great stuff, and you'll learn, too
Review: Oof. Just finished reading the last half of the book in one stretch. If you like Sterling, Gibson or Clancy, you should like this book. Stephenson has taken a sizable chunk of truth and changed the names. The treasure hunting subplots are invented, but the cryptographic and technical explanations are dead-on (clear, but not tedious).
Rating:
Summary: The Jane Austen of the Nerd Tribe writes again
Review: Neal Stephenson returns with another electric tour of the techno-geek world-view --- a comedy of manners and network protocols. Each page is a pleasure (and there are so many of them! plus a promise of more to come!), containing a pearl of insight into the workings of his alpha-geek characters, with enough technical meat to satisfy even them. Stephenson tackles some big issues here --- the possible decline of nation states in the face of globe-spanning technology; the source of value in human endeavor; cultural relativism, Good, and Evil. His treatment of autism or Asperger's syndrome in the Lawrence Waterhouse character is particularly effective. Comparing Stephenson to Tom Clancy is not fair to Stephenson --- while Stephenson takes the same pleasure in portraying technical arcana, his writing is far more lively and witty. This book is what would happen if Jane Austen set out to write ``Gravity's Rainbow'': a lucid, witty mapping of the abstract and vaguely paranoid world of Ninja Coders (in both the programming and cryptographic sense). Yes, Stephenson's editor was perhaps a bit indulgent in letting his prose stand, but the it is the reader who is indulged. I put the book down, not wanting less, but wanting more.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing story, but difficult to read.
Review: As the host of The BookWeb, I had the great opportunity to interview Neal Stephenson. He is clearly one of the great fiction writers of the day. Crytonomicon shows that, and his character development is superb. I strongly recommend this book. The reader will lose himself in the entire story. I hope the author writes a sequel. So, why did I give it only 4 stars? Because the publisher chose to use too small a font. That made reading the book laborious. So 7 stars for Neal Stephenson; 1 star for the publisher - averages to 4. Stan Emert
Rating:
Summary: Not his best - but much better than most authors
Review: Having finished it and taken a few days to let it settle, I have come to the conclusion that Cryptonomicon has some of the best scenes of any Neal Stephenson book, but is just too large and far-reaching to hold together well. It is certainly worth the time it takes to read, hence the 4 stars, but I can't really gush about it overall. The high points: * The people of Qwghlm * The Galvanick Lucipher * The division of Grandma Waterhouse's estate * Douglas MacArthur Only Stephenson would try (and succeed) with character development by calculus. The reviews here keep comparing this to Tom Clancy, but I just don't see it - Stephenson has some very big themes here, just under the surface: Liberty, Responsibility, Quality - not necessarily informing the flow of the story, but certainly informing the characters and props. Reccomended, but not as highly as his previous work.
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