One of my all-time favorites (although not quite my favorite Neal Stephenson book, that would be The Diamond Age), I read this way back when, and it's held up over time and many rereadings. If I'm wandering a bookshop and don't see anything that grabs me, I'll just get another copy of this book. It's a fun, zippy read (not as epic an undertaking as his later 500+ page behemoths), and its metaverse still sparks the imagination more than the present-day Meta metaverse. The characters are all great, but for emotional depth, I'm going with the Rat Thing.