This was a good book, but not nearly as good as [b:Snow Crash|830|Snow Crash|Neal Stephenson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320544000s/830.jpg|493634] or [b:The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer|827|The Diamond Age Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer|Neal Stephenson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320415915s/827.jpg|2181158] also by Stephenson. Unfortunately, it seems as if he's gotten used to writing very long novels that are only lightly edited. In other words, although the story was engaging, all the effort he put in to setting the scene or building the characters was for naught because there was too much extraneous information at times. It's nice to have things fleshed out, but not to the nth degree.

Also, the ending left me cold. The final conflict (a mini-war actually) was very confusing to follow because of the huge panoply of characters, both major and minor, who were ranging across the very large and international field of battle. As things came to a head, I found myself not really caring who lived and who died because what was actually happening was a huge mish-mosh of details.

In short, Stephenson may have grown too big for his britches and is now able to argue down editors so the book ends up too long.