The rock could use a bit more polishing

The Diamond Age is both amazing and frustrating. The first half of the book is truly brilliant; both science fiction and fantasy woven together with beautiful Victorian-toned prose. The second half of the book is rather irritating with dangling plot points, gratuitous sex (not needed and worse yet, not erotic) and torture scenes, and ultimately a rushed ending.

There are so many interesting sociological themes woven into this book that an English teacher could have a real field day with it. Characters are likable, settings are wonderfully vivid, but the plot gets far more convoluted than necessary. In spite of some flaws, overall, I found the book immensely entertaining, terribly imaginative, and far more literary than many sci-fi novels.

The narrator is superb - lovely voice with excellent character voices. One of the few narrators I have heard that could do a child's voice without making me gag. I wish Audible provided a separate rating category for "audio production" because I have to rate down the performance because the audio has flaws that just shouldn't be there. Jennifer Wiltsie is most definitely a FIVE STAR narrator, but there are several places in the recordings where the sound blurs and the cut at the end of part 1 is terrible. Hence my 4 stars on the performance.

I would recommend The Diamond Age with some caveats - this is definitely an adult novel and you have to be a reader willing to push on through some confusion to enjoy this.

188 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Wow, another excellent book from Stephenson

Like a lot of good authors, Stephenson has books that aren't as well known but may end up being better or as good as his best-known works. This is one of those.

It is a different breed than Snow Crash, but I want to talk about this book in its own right. Diamond Age is almost a children's story, with the main character being a child who grows into an adult by the end of the book.

Here's something you have to keep in mind: Neal's books take about an hour to 2 hours to understand the world they are taking place in. He usually talks a lot and goes into a lot of detail early on, using phrases and names of things that you have no idea. However, by about 2 hours in, you understand where everything is taking place and the world makes sense.

Since this is naturally important for any book, I didn't take off a star because of it. I really enjoy his introductions to the world that he creates, because I find myself wondering and asking questions about it.

Here's another thing to keep in mind, this book isn't for everyone... people who like technology and computing might find it more enjoyable than someone who doesn't, but I think that it can appeal to many people since it is grounded in a story about a girl growing up.

With all that said, Diamond Age is a really, really good book. You get really drawn into the characters and a lot of that has to do with the narrator and how she reads the fairy tales from the Primer, as well as the different voices she uses for other characters. Unlike some other books in Neal's stash, Diamond Age doesn't go off on long tangents about ancient Gods or religions. Some of it is there, but it has a lot more to do with destiny and abuse of technology, or "Unforeseen Consequences."

If you really liked Snow Crash, just be prepared for something a little more light-hearted and less "kick-ass action" oriented, but still highly enjoyable. 4/5 stars.

93 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Great story, solid performance, poor audio quality

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Better audio quality

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

It was a great book, but poor sampling or compression artifacts made it difficult to listen too with ambient white noise. Tinny, narrow range audio. Re-downloaded to ensure highest quality rate, but all qualities were poor.

77 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Jennifer Wiltsie is Amazing..

I've read this book several times, but after hearing Jennifer Wiltsie's fantastic reading of it, I'm now addicted to the audiobook. Her clear, warm voice, her dramatic timing, her ability to slip flawlessly through a female texan accent, a male new york accent, a chinese accent, and others in a single conversation... I can't wait to find other audio books she's narrated, just to hear her read them.

The book is great, and you will never hear a Neal Stephenson book read better than by Jennifer Wiltsie.

33 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

SKULL GUN

VOMITING PROFANITY
COLONIZE THE SOFA
This book is filled with great language. It has advanced Science Fiction gadgets and cultures. It has Dragons and Fables It tries to be all things to all people, which like usual means the plot struggles to be clear. This is probably one of the most well written books Jim, the Impatient had to give up on.

Essentially the plot becomes a psychology play with lots of symbolism, etc. I am old fashioned and need a story I can sink my teeth into. Taken separately, parts of the book are great. I also like peanut butter and I like pickles, but I don't want them together. NS had a character in the beginning who was very engaging and interesting, but that character took a long walk off a short pier and was never heard from again. A lot of people love this and you may be one of them, I got almost half way through, but could not keep my mind from wondering to other things.

27 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Engrossing and well-read

This book is a brilliant imagining of the potential wonders and dangers of nanotech, but like all good science fiction it is more about the effects of technology on society than the technology itself. In a world of superabundant materials, where anything one can design through software can be built almost costlessly, what matters is how societies choose to define themselves and the meaning of a well-lived life. Hence we have futuristic technology employed by neo-Victorians and Confucians to inculcate (and subvert...) ancient values. Fascinating, with compelling characters. Certainly a more mature and subtle work than Snow Crash, much though I enjoyed the latter. And the female reader does a superb job, rendering the various accents from the neo-Victorians to the Bronx confucianism of Judge Fang so delightfully that I think listening to this is probably even better than reading it. I had difficulty getting out of my car at the end of my commute.

26 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Sounds like it was recorded on a cassette tape.

I am a big fan of Neil Stephenson, generally find his audio books to be fantastic, and I actually felt this story had a lot of promise. Sadly, the quality of the audio is so poor that I could not bring myself to listen beyond 1/4 of the way through. To be clear, the narration is fine; it’s just that the audio quality is the worst I’ve ever heard in a book from Audible. I think I’ll just read this one on paper or Kindle.

25 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Empowering Sci-Fi for Girls

Aside from the horrible pronunciation of the foreign (Chinese) words, the story is smart and the narrator does a great job bringing the story to life. The first hour or so seem a little confusing, but stick it through and you will get to know the main characters. The author's illustration of Shanghai and China is a remarkably accurate representation of the sights and senses of China today, of Chinese culture past and the brilliance of technology of the future.

25 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Diamond Age

SnowCrash was great, but Diamond Age this is very far down on the food chain, it was difficult just to listen to it, one of the few books I have actually put down.

19 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

A fine example of a recurring SF theme

Let me be clear at the outset: this is a good book, from a really good author.

Some of the reviews of this book make the mistake of viewing it as a children's book mixed with an adult's.

It is in fact another attempt to address the common Science Fiction theme of how to educate future generations as touched on in other classic works such as Ender's Game or Dune.

The essential question is:
"Adversity made our generation great.
How do we make our children's generation great without having to suffer similar adversity?"

In order to cover the author's idea of the answer to this question there is a lot of coverage of the education of one child in particular. This is essential to the plot and is interesting in how it shapes the adult the child becomes.

This is not hard Science Fiction, although there is very advanced technologly. It is soft Science Fiction as it is much more concerned with how a technology perilously close to magic in its application could affect humanity.

In the main the narrator does a superb job, her voice is pleasant to listen to and she does a convincing, if limited, range of accents.

My only niggle is that she pronounces the word 'primer' to rhyme with 'trimmer' rather than with 'timer'. It sounds ridiculous, but I found it so distracting that I almost gave the work 4 stars instead of 5.

However I did not as that would have been petty pedantry as the rest of the production is very well done.

18 personnes ont trouvé cela utile