Rating: 
Summary: Truly Brilliant and Hilarious
Review: Both the present day and WW2 stories in this novel are brilliant and hilarious. Bobby Shaftoe obsesses on how a Komodo Dragon saved him from a Japanese Pillbox while high on morphine horrifying all he comes in contact with. In present day Seattle, poor Daniel Waterhouse is humiliated when the girl he is courting is forced to watch his math/science geek family divide up a deceased relatives possessions by charting them in a parking lot with the x axis being their monetary value and the y axis their sentimental value. A discussion of what makes an oral surgeon truly brilliant had me in stitches. You have to read it to believe it. I found Snow Crash to be interesting but also far-fetched, this is a wonderful historical epic that had me thinking and laughing on every page. I beg you to read it.
Rating: 
Summary: An engrossing, exciting, epic journey into a brick wall
Review: The middle-brows and genre lovers occasionally try to hoist one of the more impressive examples of their world up into the complex, literary sphere, invariably referring to whichever book it is as 'Pynchon, only funnier', 'with passages rivalling Delillo', or 'contains a vision as complete as Joyce or Shakespeare'. These twee remarks are never true. 'The Lord of the Rings' has been elevated in such a way, as has 'Dune' and 'Foundation'. Cryptonomicon, while being a brilliant novel with a plot of rare density and excitement, falls into this category. It has its cult status and biblical praise, but in truth it is little more than the sum of its parts.
What Cryptonomicon has is a highly impressive, multilayered plot whose various strands move along with a laudable level of mystique, violence, and humour. You begin with three mathematicians cycling in the woods and progress into an ever-increasing and ever-engrossing plotline which takes you from modern-day computer geekdom and the legal murk of cunning business deals back and forth through the entire span of World War 2, following an army sargeant and an eccentric, code-breaking genius along their independent, but occasionally intertwined, journey into one hell of a mystery.
The main characters and the hypnotic plot are what recommend this novel. The genius code-breaker is a man of weird fascinations and his askew view of the world is consistently kept. Shaftoe, the army sargeant, is a dry and self-reliant Vonnegutesque non-hero whose inability to get too wound up by the often ferocious events surrounding him grounds the war elements in a believeable reality. Enoch Root, an officer and a cleric, is a semi-mystic who resembles the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland - another interesting character. The book's plot is colossal and, while it stays in the WW2 plotline, is never boring. New threads are added unexpectedly and Stephenson rarely lets anything dangle or become moot, though when he does it serves as a cancer on a large part of the novel. I will explain later.
The book is both aided and hindered by the writing. By and large, the book is written adequately with frequent moments of real wit. Stephenson can imbue a moment with real wonder and can create large theatres of action wherein nuances are paid attention to as well. This doesn't happen enough, though. There are sections that are written bluntly, coarsely, and without imagination. They do not belong in a book of this ambition and weaken the power which had previous being building. There are sections, most often in the contemporary plotline, which drag along blandly and add nothing to the experience but time.
The worst offence of all in this book is the ending. The World War 2 plotlines end well and set up what the reader expects to be a profound climax. No such thing occurs. A very important antagonist is done away with out of the blue in less than a page, ending a plotline which was promising to be a razor-edge, all-or-nothing climax for the computer geeks and their impossibly grand scheme. A complex antecedent plot regarding a data haven near the Philippines becomes a predicate plot about a hunt for Nazi gold. A terrible amount of anticipation fizzles out in the transition. One is led to believe this gold will finance the data haven, but it's all left unsaid in a quick and painful wrap-up.
The ending stinks and makes one believe Stephenson was either told to end it as quickly as possible for publishing reasons or he tired of the whole thing and, instead of hiding this from his readership and pushing on, thus saving the novel, he gave in and ended it all in a way not a million miles away from 'He woke up and it was all a dream'.
Nevertheless, this novel is, in the final analysis, an interesting novel with heaps of code-history and thought-provoking discussions, such as the conversation about Ares and Athena being complex metaphors for different approaches to war. Read it, enjoy it, bite your tongue when it drags, read the ending near a punching-bag, for the vast majority of the book is damn fine fare.
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.
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