Cryptonomicon

4.5 stars. My favourite, so far, book by Stephenson. Finally he managed to cut those annoying (for me) omnipresent pop-references and women are not as oversexualised as it was in his previous books. The plot is great and really engaging. Putting it in two historical periods was a great decision. As the story unveils we get more and more characters and threads, however everything at some point starts to connect and converge to the same point to culminate with a satisfactory ending. I also really enjoyed the cryptology theme. Even though some parts were somehow incorrect, as a whole it credible and to be honest quite amazing how Stephenson could in 1999 create, albeit only on paper, the idea of cryptocurrencies (disclaimer - I haven't heard about any earlier reference to it, at least not in cultural works).
The size of this book is scary. Almost 1200 pages with typical to the author tendency to extensive descriptions of the world, ideas, characters and so on. Even though he goes to extreme with those descriptions, he also manages to keep them engaging and the story doesn't feel boring at any point. I definitely see it as an achievement. It might have been a bit shorter, but I suppose we would lose a bit of Stephenson's style in a backlash.
Every book by Stephenson I read is full of wild and imaginative ideas. This one however feels to me as the first one where he managed to create a compelling story as well. And even though cryptology stands in the middle of the book it doesn't take over the story telling and character building. I will definitely reach for his other works now.