The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

this book annoyed me. a lot. i am a very forgiving reader and i don't ask for profundity, wisdom, or perfect endings; if i'm entertained, i won't complain. but this book pissed me off. i think it was sloppily thrown together, hurriedly finished, half-assedly edited, and rushed out to the printer under the assumption that we're idiots and we wouldn't notice the mistakes and half-assedness of it.

neal stephenson wrote Crytponomicon, which is one of my favorite three books EVER (one of the other two is The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles, and i dunno what the third is but i'm assuming there is a third). and his Snow Crash was a fun book, too, so i expect good things from him. this book is about a little girl living in the not-too-distant nanotechnological future world.

here's one bit of evidence that neal and his publishers didn't really give a shit about getting things Right with this book (or didn't KNOW what Right was b/c they just didn't really care): the dustcover of the book (and this is the 4th printing of the book so don't tell me it was a first-printing error) says it takes place in the "21st Century." but on page 176, someone's reading a statement about something that happened in the prior chapter (wherein the month, day and exact year are blank) that states, "on the __ day of __, 21__,..." ummm...you can fill in any two digits you want after that 21__, and you will be the 22nd Century, not the 21st. sloppy.

but i could let that go. the main problem i had was that from pages 50 to 450, i really liked this book. there were a few threads that were hanging loose, but i figured hey he'll clean that up later, and if not, it's ok, because i'm sure the more important stuff will blow me away at the end. instead this book literally turns into a lump of steamy dogpoop in its final (and crucial) twenty pages. the ending sucks. not because it's Sad, or Happy, or anything, it's just Garbage. it's extremely obvious that he got sick of the book, couldn't figure out how to tie up his complicated story, and just gave up on the great story he'd written up to that point. he said, "whatever, they'll buy it, who cares..." and wrote the sort of last four pages that i wrote to end short stories when i was in 4th grade.

also worth noting that shortly after he wrote this book he started writing his Baroque Cycle books which all take place in the Victorian Age and are a grand total of many thousands of pages. THIS book, The Diamond Age, takes place in the future but has a lot of stuff about these "Neo-Victorians" who are creating a great new society based on the ideals of the old victorians. i think neal decided forget this future crap, i'm gonna wrap this book up quick and dirty and start writing some super long (and, i've heard, TEDIOUS) books that take place back with the real victorians.

screw you, neal stephenson. you wasted two weeks worth of nighttime reading for me.