The Diamond Age

Stephenson is on his shit again with this one.

It's not that I don't think that Stephenson puts a lot of time into his work, I do. The problem lies mostly in how he chooses to represent that work, how he chooses to show the world to the reader. For every sliver of intrigue in the plot, there are five instances of over cooked world building, where things are told to you about the world with the cold distance of a textbook. There's a lot of unnecessary description, to the point of sheer self indulgence, like the part when he lists the ingredients of a bottle of condiment. These details fog the actually important or interesting bits, until you find yourself in a malaise of bloat.

Despite this systemic problem, this is probably the best I've read from him. The novel starts out a little above average, but looses the little steam it had and putters to clunky finish. I did enjoy his focus on nanotechnology way more than I did when he did the same for the net in Snow Crash, and I enjoyed the exploration of the role of culture and It's a shame that I didn't enjoy the fairy-tale bit of the Primer, because a lot of time is spent on them and boy do they get repetitive and tedious.