There's some interesting aspects of plot to it, but it could have been about half the length and still been good. I'm also pretty uncomfortable with the way middle Eastern people are depicted—there is not a single positive character of middle Eastern descent in the book, and the terrorists are portrayed in a decidedly one dimensional way with the exception of one character. This is also true for most of the unnamed Asian characters in the novel. It's a pretty lazy attempt at writing, I expect something better out of Neal Stephenson.