A review by manuphoto
The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson

dark emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

To appreciate this book, you need to get through the first 100 pages. Stephenson builds a fairly original and complex world during this first fifth of the novel. You’ll be lost at times, understanding the words but not their relation to the story. However, it will all make sense eventually—until it sometimes stops making sense. It’s complicated.

I experienced something similar with Snow Crash, although the world made sense a bit quicker in that novel than in The Diamond Age. Once the different elements align and the relationships between characters, locations, and events become clearer, I started really enjoying the book and understood much of what had happened before. Tricky author Stephenson! But he knows how to reward his readers most of the time. He can be a little “style over substance” at times, with too many rabbit holes for him to send us down to showcase his storytelling chops. This is especially true after the 50% mark in the novel, where I often found myself thinking, “Do I really need to know all these tiny details about this world? I’ve got enough to imagine them in my own way.” But I guess Stephenson had a very precise idea of how this world should look, leaving little to the imagination.

That being said, Stephenson also tackles very important and difficult themes. For example, his depiction of child abuse is very vivid, and I was quite moved by it. There is also a reflection on how privileged people interact with poorer ones and the cycle of violence and scarcity that affects them. It’s done in a clear but not too on-the-nose way, using this imagined future to discuss our own—something I always find interesting in sci-fi. That being said, the imagined future is close enough to our reality that it doesn’t take much effort to understand what he’s getting at. It does remove a bit of the “magic,” but it’s a fair trade, I guess.

In the last third of the book, I found the chapters to be wildly unequal in quality. Some are amazing: tight, efficient, with deep emotional impact. Others show Stephenson’s tendency to indulge in fanciful writing. It’s a shame, as it distracts from the core of the novel.

It’s a bit frustrating. Stephenson has the writing talent, imagination, skill, and thoroughness, but he seems too in love with his own writing, which I find a bit tedious and detrimental. At a certain point, it doesn’t serve the story and lacks balance. The last 100 pages or so are quite afflicted by this. There are some remarkable and bonkers action scenes, but the whole thing becomes convoluted and sometimes confusing.

Although I enjoyed this book and found it stimulating, relevant, and brilliant at times, it won’t rank as high in my evaluation as I feel it should have. It should be in my top ten, among those 4.5-5 star books that I recommend to anyone, but it falls short of that.