I have read Snow Crash awhile back. Having enjoyed it very much I was hoping for the same with Diamond Age.
I was sorely dissapointed. The begining was great. The first character introduced (usually the main character) dies after a few pages. A shock for the reader but it quickly becomes intriguing as the plot moves on to the son. Then a couple of changes in focus on different characters becomes confusing, but many good books start that way. In fact, I remembered it was hard following Snow Crash for awhile. But because I didn't give up, I was rewarded with an exciting ending. So I thought it would be the same with Diamond Age. So I ploughed on. But each page I turned and each chapter brought more confusion and inconsequential events that seem to happen for no real reason.
Nell (the main character) reads a children's book that adapts it's stories to the reader's current real life. It was a good novelty at the beginning. But so many pages were devoted to Nell's reading that the book in my hand became a side story. Worse is that the readings doesn't seem to have anything to do with Nell.
Perhaps it does in the end but it is too late. For I gave up on the book and went back to something I could count on, like the Simarillion.

When I picked up this book, I was hoping that it wasn't as confusing and as hard to follow as William Gibson's Neuromancer. I was pleasantly engaged by the first half of the book. Wonderful world building, attention to detail, and captivating characters. Unfortunately, it went downhill from there. After the halfway point, the book lost what little semblance of a plot it had to begin with. There seemed to be no motivation behind the characters actions. We seem to just be looking in on segments of peoples' lives with no ultimate goal in mind. At the end, there was no climax and no resolution. It was as if Mr. Stephenson couldn't figure out how to finish the book and so just stopped writing at the end of a random chapter. I finished the last page and, literally, asked myself, "What the hell was that! " I felt like Mr. Stephenson had just wasted 8 hours of my life. What a disappointment!