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Loading... The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book) (original 1995; edition 2000)by Neal Stephenson (Author)
Work InformationThe Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (1995)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This was a confounding book. The second half felt very different from the first half and it went places I did not expect. It almost felt like we got the major plot points without any of the clever, insightful prose because the author was coming up against a deadline or something. Like most Neal Stephenson books there were some really interesting ideas and concepts here, but not much of a story, or hook. I hated what happened to Nell's character towards the end of the book and the ending itself was very abrupt. ( ) *gasp, pant* After a couple of false starts and a break to read an easier book, I finally finished! I feel like there should be a certificate or a sticker, at the very least. 500 pages is not a long book, granted, but the text is so dense and the world-building and dramatis personae so complex and extensive that every page seemed to equal a chapter. I enjoyed the author's powerful imagination while reading, and did get caught up in Nell's story, but I'm not sure I understood half of what was going on - probably more than a William Gibson novel, though. Also, the ending was abysmal. I was going to add that reading Snow Crash first might have helped my comprehension - but according to my library, I have read Snow Crash! Apparently Stephenson never makes any sense and my brain blocks the experience out afterwards. no reviews | add a review
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HTML:Vividly imagined, stunningly prophetic, and epic in scope, The Diamond Age is a major novel from one of the most visionary writers of our time Decades into our future, a stoneâ??s throw from the ancient city of Shanghai, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just broken the rigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful neo-Victorians. He's made an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called A Young Ladys Illustrated Primer Commissioned by an eccentric duke for his grandchild, stolen for Hackworth's own daughter, the Primerâ??s purpose is to educate and raise a girl capable of thinking for herself. It performs its function superbly. Unfortunately for Hackworth, his smuggled copy has fallen into the wrong hands. Young Nell and her brother Harv are thetesâ??members of the poor, tribeless class. Neglected by their mother, Harv looks after Nell. When he and his gang waylay a certain neo-Victorianâ??John Percival Hackworthâ??in the seamy streets of their neighborhood, Harv brings Nell something special: the Primer. Following the discovery of his crime, Hackworth begins an odyssey of his own. Expelled from the neo-Victorian paradise, squeezed by agents of Protocol Enforcement on one side and a Mandarin underworld crime lord on the other, he searches for an elusive figure known as the Alchemist. His quest and Nellâ??s will ultimately lead them to another seeker whose fate is bound up with the Primerâ??a woman who holds the key to a vast, subversive information network that is destined to decode and reprogram th No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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