Storyline: 3/5 
 Characters: 5/5 
 Writing Style: 5/5 
 Resonance: 1/5 
 Cryptonomicon. The word resounds technosavvy, avant-garde attitude. The additional verbiage between that title and the back page are something that Charles Dickens might have penned had he been born 150 years later and pursued mordant juxtaposition instead of gentle dissimilitude. The writing was rich. It was profane. It was richly profane. Stephenson deconstructed military life, nerd life, love life; everything he touched in the book. He made symphonies of airport bathrooms and marauders of upscale hotel suites. The tale rollicked through racial, ethnic, gender, and religious stereotypes, seducing the reader away from propriety and diplomacy. It was beautiful; it was ugly. I laughed aloud more than I have with any other book, laughter of that abruptly-encountering-the-astonishing variety that leaves you grinning as you reflect on why it impacted you so. I was thoroughly impressed and entertained. 
 Stephenson throws us in with remarkable characters in extraordinary circumstances. We were treated to first-person perspectives of wildly different perceptions, assumptions, and deductions. It was a delight, while reading, just to consider that the world might actually contain people that think and behave in these ways. I felt catered to as Stephenson led me to regions that I've traveled to before and to kinds of people that I know well. With such a broad canvass covering so much of the world and so many peoples, the odds are good that other readers will find somewhere or someone familiar too. 
 The story was adequately mysterious and promising; entertaining and educational. I developed an anticipation for upcoming changes. Not only was I eagerly waiting for the disparate storylines to connect, but I saw my least favorite ones overtake my favorite. It became a race where I wondered which would take or maintain the lead. 
 Why, then, did I feel indifferent by the end? I had a nagging worry throughout the book that Stephenson was going to disappoint. This was, as far as the storyline went, a rather tame historical fiction war novel. There's a kind of historical fiction that I dislike and try to avoid: the one that is essentially the dramatizing of the historical record. For the bulk of the book - probably for at least the first 700 pages or so - I found Cryptonomicon to be that kind of historical fiction. There's already reputable history books covering the events Stephenson was chronicling. They were extraordinary, real events with remarkable, actual people, thus I couldn't figure out why he was telling this tale. When I finished the book, I still had no satisfactory answer to the question. I had some hope there in the last few hundred pages, as Stephenson shifted more to general fiction and away from the historical fiction, that he was moving in for his decisive move. It never came. The FAQ at the end of the book was interesting, with both intriguing questions and informative answers. It confirmed to me that Stephenson did not have any real goals other than entertaining with a historical fiction story. That possibility had troubled me throughout the book, weighing on the experience. I could almost decode his brilliant approach to the quotidian. Throughout I was just on the verge of breaking his code, seeing his formula. He would take some commonplace event, style, or belief; break it down into its constituent parts, reassemble them to fit incongruously or absurdly. He would then move on. None of the biting commentary seemed meaningful to the author. It was just his application of the formula to contemporary events. When the story ended the same way, it rang empty. I wanted him to be saying something, for it all to matter. He was not, and it did not. 
 This was worth reading for the writing style alone. The wonderful characters were an added bonus. If you are a historical fiction fan, then all the better. I was subdued at the end, and although I never particularly liked the cyberpunk elements to Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, I came to wish that Stephenson would have applied his many talents to a more imaginary world instead of the history here.