A review by sorbeth
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

adventurous challenging dark slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

2.0

The first part of the book is interesting, though ridiculously dense with purple prose.
The last quarter to third is not good.  It becomes much more a deus ex machina and rather incoherent.  Miranda drops out of the story, the focus changes from Nell to princess Nell, Carl, and Hackworth.

There is casual involvement of rape and a whole lot of
not particularly consensual orgy with the drummers
, some ethnic topics that smell racist and wild generalities.  And Carl doesn’t seem to acknowledge that he
introduced Miranda to people that apparently lure her into something violently fatally hideous, mass orgy that is apparently going on for years, and at some point (and is near the end) that results in the woman burning to death and being dissolved in a bucket and drunk.
  And the character who witnessed the first instance of this in the story is neither horrified nor  acknowledged his own involvement.  

First part of the story was good, goes to garbage at the introduction of the drummers.  And something really ugly nationalistic and bigoted in the socio-political tone .
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