Tyler Aaron's Reviews > The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

** spoiler alert ** Breaks my heart to rate it anything less than four stars, but the end I am more mixed than I am enchanted by The Diamond Age. There are many moments of pure awe in this book as you witness Stephenson create incredibly forward-thinking, imaginative technology. It has a a fair amount of heart to latch onto in the middle section and the revelations that characters discover are truly fascinating.

However, I found the ending to be quite incoherent and head-scratching. It felt like an unwelcome tonal shift accompanied by unnecessary plot. Also, some of the edginess hasn’t aged well and it can be slightly triggery at times but this wasn’t a big enough factor in its own to really have an effect on my rating. If the ending was more tidied up and some of the writing a little less opaque I would have rated it 5 stars on its’ ideas alone.