Cryptonomicon

Rating:
Summary: WWII history buffs will love it!
Review: Stephenson always does his homework. The WWII history that forms the central backdrop to this wide ranging story is clearly well researched (or it feels that way to the uninformed!). I found that the story bogged down a bit in his extensively detailed back story to the point that I tried skipping sections. Then I learned that I had to go back and re-read those parts as there were central story elements there. I wish that he had edited some of his highly detailed descriptive language down a bit though.

His central premise of an internet currency backed by stolen gold and the idea of an off shore data haven were intriguing. The characters that support the story line are sufficiently well drawn that you care about them enough to keep reading. I particularly enjoyed learning about the history of the early code breaking machines in WWII, and the people behind them.

Rating:
Summary: Decent
Review: An interesting read, it respects history while adding fictional details and twisting events to connect everything in a nice little package. However, the Deus Ex Machina ending left me feeling cheated, much as Snow Crash.

Rating:
Summary: A Fastinating Story
Review: When I picked up this book, which at 900+ pages is no small feat, I was afraid it would be dull and wordy. Four days later I finished it, having stayed up all night to do so. Stephenson's style is humorous and not too difficult to read. He does spend an exceeding amount of time talking about math and cryptography, which may deter some people. I find that they add color to the novel and help flesh out the characters. The tale itself is wonderfully woven together between the two time periods. Some other reviews attacked the novel for its size or technical subject matter. You'll notice that all these reviewers managed to finish the book. If you have the patience to spend a long time with a novel, or if you have a week with nothing to do, let me recomend Cryptonomicon.

Rating:
Summary: fair
Review: Cryptonomicon is well written and enjoyable to read but its
close to 1200 pages can be exhausting. The ending does not
bring all the sub-plots to a close at all. The book just stops.
I could just as easily stopped at page 600, 700, or 800 and
have had an equally satisfying "loose ended" finish.

Rating:
Summary: One of the finest novels ever, alongside Pynchon, Eco
Review: I don't know what happened between Snow Crash and this novel, but it must have been not unlike a caterpillar turning into a chrysalis and then a butterfyl. Suffice to say, this novel has made its mark and has becoming a resounding futurist insight into our short-term future in America and around the world. Be sure to read it. And please don't treat it like a sc-fi novel because this is both an historical novel as well as a technological post modern thriller.

Rating:
Summary: Look Mom- I Wrote a Book about Math!
Review: Where to begin-- I am no computer scientist, and care not for any mistakes Stephenson may have made in the accuracy department, but as a work of fiction, this fails. I am a sci-fi fan, and actually enjoyed "The Diamond Age" by the same author. But the weak points in that novel became the focal point in this monstrosity. Convoluted plot- fine. Dissapointing ending- okay. But things for which the author cannot be forgiven:
- endlessly showing off in long passages that I only hope are correct-- dealing with mathematical formulas and computer designs. I know this is a book about crypto-- it's not the fact that he's figured something out that bugs me. It's the characters launching, at the drop of a hat, into a lecture to explain it---to each other! For example : at the gathering of Randy's family to distribute the matriarch's possessions. The characters (or wooden author-puppets), pipe up and excitedly discuss how an algorithm can help them distribute the goods. One of these characters supposedly spent an entire day fighting about some dresser. I mean, if Stephenson wanted to write a math book, he should have just done it. He has committed the most grievous (and lengthy) sin of having his characters be transparent mouthpieces for his ideas, that I have ever come across. I literally would lose track of who's talking in a given scene, because the narrative voice of any character is the same as any other! The only reason I could identify Bobby Shaftoe was his habit of shouting "sir, yes sir!"

I would have enjoyed this book more if the author had tried a little harder to create charaters, rather than just jotting down what seemed to be notes for a future book. I could have cared less if the entire cast of the story was blown up in the final scene-- why would it matter? I have never come across such blatant author-mouthpieces before, and I hope I never do again. I haven't given up all hope for this author, because he is witty and has clever ideas. I just wouldn't call this one fiction.

Rating:
Summary: Intellectual Thriller Impossible to Put Down
Review: If you have the faintest tolerance for technology as a plot tool (e.g. Clancy) and enjoy entering an authors's world construct that is exciting, impossible to predict and imaginative, then you will like this book. Think of it as a gritty pulse-pounding and technological world but as fascinating as Harry Potter's. The author does not assume the reader is an incompetent and that is a lot of fun. Everybody I know of consequence in the world of high tech, advanced communication and encryption has read this books and is enthusiastic. The entire workforce of a government agency in Maryland appears to have read this book. It is a really "in" book and it astounds me how the author learned enough to cover the territory he does so effortlessly.

Rating:
Summary: Best SF I have read in years!
Review: This is my favorite of all of Neal Stephenson's works.
It has two stories running in two time periods (WWII and
present day). I found that I really identified with the main characters, and couldn't put it down.

There are some interesting new ideas relating to
cryptography which are interesting and relavent since
if you are purchasing the book via Amazon, your credit
card information is encrypted. Turns out that Neal's father worked for the NSA so he has some rather interesting insights into decryption and the people involved with
this type of work. Made a complex topic an enjoyable read!

After reading this book, I had to run down and read all of
Neals other works, all of which were fun reads, but did not
have the lasting impact this book did for me.
The Amazon recommendations are good.

Rating:
Summary: Yes! This one made top-5 on my all-time list!
Review: This book is simply amazing. Don't let its size prevent you from reading it. Stephenson is a very talented writer and I'm surely going to read other books he's written.

Now let me try to explain Cryptonomicon for someone who doesn't know a lot about the book.

First: the book is divided in two stories, told togheter through the book, although they are separated by fifty years. One passes in the present time, more or less (1998), and its main characters are a bunch of people involved in a project to create a data heaven (something like the Cayman islands, but related to information and means to provide a steady flux of that information) in a tiny sulatanate near the Philipines. The main characters in this part of the story are Randy Waterhouse and Amy Shaftoe, people in charge of implementing that data heaven. The other is set during the second world War, when Lawrence Waterhouse is the brilliant mathematician in charge of decrypting the Axis war codes, and Bobby Shaftoe is the semi-crazy all-terrain soldier in charge of an Army detachment sent on contraditory errands whose intent is not letting the germans and japanese discover that their codes have already been broken. It seems complicated and it is, but Stephenson's style of narrative adjusts well to the dificulties of telling such a strange story. The last names of the characters are, not casually, identical in both parts of the story.

Second: there is another division in the plot. This one is not time-related. Suddenly, in the present-time storyline as much as in the World War storyline, there begins a race to discover the lost gold the japanese and the germans were hidding somewhere along the Pacific Rim, involving characters of both timelines! And that's where I was impressed with Stephenson. He was able to write the same plot within two totally different eras. And all this is written in a very intelligent way; Stephenson lays clues of one time story into the other one! Amazing.

The characters are really well developed. Stephenson writes not only about what was supposesd to be in the book, but also of ancient computer systems, greek mythology, theology, and many other stuff, that, instead of transforming Cryptonomicon in a boring book, makes it really one of the best I've read in my life. But the eventual reader will have to take his time with this one. This isn't intended to be a fast read. This is intended to be a fantastic read, so go slow and always, and, in the end, you'll be rewarded.

Grade 9.7/10

Rating:
Summary: Ego in need of an editor
Review: The paperback version is more than 1100 pages, printed on thin paper in 8-pt. type. No kidding. It's difficult to hold in your hand, even, like an overstuffed sandwich. It's also difficult to slog through because it's so slow and irrelevant in so many places, has many anachronisms (careless on research other than endless tech details), and filled with overwritten, convoluted prose. Some of it is interesting, much of it is clever, all of it should have been cut by half.