Rating: 
Summary: Future past tense
Review: Just as my gramatical reference makes no sense neither does The Diamond Age. After reading Cryptonomicron, I thought I had found a new breed of sci-fi writer. Snow Crash was an interesting first step but clearly not the sophisticated production that Cryto is. Diamond Age fits no where in between either thematically or structurally. Stephenson falls back on the old sci-fi bromide that creates a future where they have superior technology but it adds nothing to the world the people live in. The characters live a less convenient life than we do yet have at their disposal technology to do away with all the ills of day to day life. Riding chevalines (horses) for God sake is but one instance of the banal existence these people subject themselves to and riding in airships (zeplins).Maybe I don't get this genre but Asimov certainly did it better. He took today's technology and projected it into the future to show us how things could be. Stephenson throws out today to create a tomorow that's worse than the past. This isn't science fiction. Its just a disppointment. The promise of Snow Crash realized in Crypto is lost in this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic!
Review: This Book Is Fantastic. Some similar concepts of snow crash (also fantastic) but more mature and developed. Stephenson is quite a talent.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and Lovely
Review: A great cyberpunk fairy tale. Neal Stephenson is the twisted love child of Frances Hodgson Burnett and William Gibson. In the future, due to advances in nano-technology it is possible to grow just about anything out of constituent atoms. Humanity's basic needs are thus pretty much cared for, but there are still privileged sections of society and not so privileged sections. Someone in one of the privileged sections decides that his children were brought up a bit too mundanely and so commissions a "Young Girl's Primer" for his granddaughter. This interactive, artificially intelligent book falls into the hands of a little girl from a not so privileged section of society and stuff happens. It's cool. Read it.
Rating:
Summary: For the new millenium
Review: Stephenson has wrought something new for the twenty-first century. Comparisons to William Gibson are hardly apt. Since "Neuromancer" Gibson has grown into something of a prose stylist, emphasizing sly characterization rather more than technological prophecy. Stephenson has emerged as the idea man of the modern science fiction. One greets "The Diamond Age" with something of the amazement that must have greeted "Foundation" or "Stranger in a Strange Land" (or even "The World of Null-A"). Should Stephenson continue to write science fiction, then he could become the pre-eminent figure in the field.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent and compelling
Review: I have generally NTS's work to be of highest literary caliber, when compared to that of Bruce Sterling, for example, or that of Gibson [whose writing matured with Idoru, IMO]. He scores very high in the inventiveness category and characterization as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant ideas, little suspense
Review: A lot of people read SF primarily for the ideas, and I'd argue there is no better fiction for that purpose. Add at least two stars to this review if you are an 'ideas' reader, because Stephenson has more ideas than the next five successful SF writers combined. For me, though, the lack of suspense, the lack of absorbing characters, and the lack of story momentum led me to abandon this book after I had dutifully slogged through more than half of it. Maybe it picks up dramatically near the end, but frankly, at this point, I just felt my reading time would be better spent elsewhere. It would be interesting to see Neal Stephenson team up with a strongly character-based SF luminary for a collaboration.
Rating: 
Summary: a cool book
Review: I think a lot of the biggest good and bad points of the book are mentioned in everybody elses reviews, but there is one element that nobody else seems to think is important. Neal manages to creat a wonderafly believable Libertarian Utopia, which is something I've never seen done anywhere else. Perhaps Utopia is a little strong, the world has a lot of imperfections and couldn't be believable if it didn't, but on the whole it is very much a place where I would like to live.
Rating:
Summary: A beautifully layered textured study of the human condition.
Review: A magnificent book that showcases the beauty of the human spirit.
Rating:
Summary: The Diamond Age as a Commentary on Education
Review: I first read The Diamond Age about a year ago, and was struck not only by its quality as a work of science fiction, but also by Stephenson's commentary on child rearing and education. As a teacher, I found many of his ideas were closely related to the current and well-respected research on learning. The Primer employs educational techniques espoused by John Dewey, Seymour Papert, Roger Schank and many others. Approaches such as constructivism, learner-centered instruction, and storytelling are among the vast repertoire of the Primer. I highly recommend this book, not only for entertainment as a fresh and exciting work of science fiction, but also for exploring the possibilities of utilizing technology to improve the education of our children.
Rating:
Summary: Ugh! What a waste of 8 hours!
Review: When I picked up this book, I was hoping that it wasn't as confusing and as hard to follow as William Gibson's Neuromancer. I was pleasantly engaged by the first half of the book. Wonderful world building, attention to detail, and captivating characters. Unfortunately, it went downhill from there. After the halfway point, the book lost what little semblance of a plot it had to begin with. There seemed to be no motivation behind the characters actions. We seem to just be looking in on segments of peoples' lives with no ultimate goal in mind. At the end, there was no climax and no resolution. It was as if Mr. Stephenson couldn't figure out how to finish the book and so just stopped writing at the end of a random chapter. I finished the last page and, literally, asked myself, "What the hell was that! " I felt like Mr. Stephenson had just wasted 8 hours of my life. What a disappointment!
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