All the Neal Stephenson’s novels after Snow Crash I’ve read seem to share the same problem — their settings are far more interesting than the stories they tell.

The Diamond Age is set in a fascinating future where nanotechnology runs the society and the borders of countries have effectively dissolved changing the political structure of the world completely. Neal Stephenson utilizes this setting to tell the tale of a girl who is brought up by a smart book of fables… wait, what? The novel does touch upon politics and the fascinating structure of the world from time to time, but in essence, it’s a coming of age story which falls bewilderingly short of what you’d expect from a setting like this.

Still definitely a worthwhile read, especially for the other fascinating stuff going on in the background, even if I wasn’t too thrilled over the direction of its main plot.

Positive:	Negative:
Lots of cool hard sci-fi concepts and ideas	The central plot is kind of dull
A fascinating and well-thought out complex futuristic world	Characters are not that interesting
A bunch of cool bigger things (like semi-revolutions) happen in the background at least