Duffy Pratt's Reviews > The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

Suppose you wanted to write a new Victorian bildungsroman about the Boxer Rebellion. It would only be natural that the central plot of the book should focus around the Turing test for artificial intelligence. Now set the book in a future Shanghai, in a world where nanotechnology makes material needs obsolete, at least in theory... And voila: The Diamond Age.

Like Hackworth, the hacker supreme in The Diamond Age, Stephenson seems to be unable to resist anything that is supremely clever. I think that's the quality that sets him apart as a writer. And sometimes, like with this book, the cleverness pays off. I think this is as close to a perfect construction as he has written. Among the various levels of coolness in this book, perhaps the best is the way he starts to merge the book within the book with the book itself.

The book also sports his typical weakness: hit characters rarely leap out and become more than the type he starts with. Here, the level of characterization goes beyond the Hiro Protagonist of Snow Crash. But not by all that much. In the end, instead of becoming a full blown person, Nell becomes Princess Nell of the Primer. And in some ways, Hackworth the hacker becomes the Coyote King. The process is really cool, and it's tons of fun as always. But I still am left with a certain empty feeling that I have at the end of his books. And even so, I can't wait to see what he comes up with next.