The Diamond Age
Nov. 14th, 2008 11:01 amNeal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
You can tell this is a Neal Stephenson book by how the plot falls apart by the end.
That's not entirely fair. You can really tell it's a Stephenson by the dialogue (Judge Fang's in particular), by the names of things (the House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel, at which Fang and his cohorts devour fried chicken), by the hacker in-jokes (look, it's a bazaar! With a free flow of information! And, are those cathedral bells we hear tolling at the end of the book?). And Diamond Age doesn't fall apart nearly so badly as Cryptonomicon (the book that, 2/3 of the way through, made me swear off future Stephenson books until someone gets him a proper editor).
Like Snow Crash and Crypto, Diamond Age is a fun read, full of witty characters and a plot that collapses under its own weight. Unlike those, Diamond Age is about something bigger than the wild ride. It's an analysis of societal structures, of moral virtues, and of how those virtues are passed to people (children) who don't necessarily choose them. It's about the success and failure of strict societies (Victorian, Confucian) and the need for flexibility.
I was having a great deal of fun with the book up until about halfway through, when the strange distributed hive-mind of the Drummers pops up (and absorbs a main character). At that point. . . something snapped. It wasn't precisely my disbelief suspenders. More that. . . they felt out of place in the techno-rational world Stephenson had created. At that point I stopped being swept along and started reading more critically. Which is kind of crucial for the enjoyment of Stephenson's books, and in particular for believing in and being thrilled by the upheaval and near-transformation of the world at the end of this one.
It's still good stuff; I'd reread it, I'd recommend it to other people. It's just not as good as the first half suggests. (Much like Stephenson's other books.)
You can tell this is a Neal Stephenson book by how the plot falls apart by the end.
That's not entirely fair. You can really tell it's a Stephenson by the dialogue (Judge Fang's in particular), by the names of things (the House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel, at which Fang and his cohorts devour fried chicken), by the hacker in-jokes (look, it's a bazaar! With a free flow of information! And, are those cathedral bells we hear tolling at the end of the book?). And Diamond Age doesn't fall apart nearly so badly as Cryptonomicon (the book that, 2/3 of the way through, made me swear off future Stephenson books until someone gets him a proper editor).
Like Snow Crash and Crypto, Diamond Age is a fun read, full of witty characters and a plot that collapses under its own weight. Unlike those, Diamond Age is about something bigger than the wild ride. It's an analysis of societal structures, of moral virtues, and of how those virtues are passed to people (children) who don't necessarily choose them. It's about the success and failure of strict societies (Victorian, Confucian) and the need for flexibility.
I was having a great deal of fun with the book up until about halfway through, when the strange distributed hive-mind of the Drummers pops up (and absorbs a main character). At that point. . . something snapped. It wasn't precisely my disbelief suspenders. More that. . . they felt out of place in the techno-rational world Stephenson had created. At that point I stopped being swept along and started reading more critically. Which is kind of crucial for the enjoyment of Stephenson's books, and in particular for believing in and being thrilled by the upheaval and near-transformation of the world at the end of this one.
It's still good stuff; I'd reread it, I'd recommend it to other people. It's just not as good as the first half suggests. (Much like Stephenson's other books.)