I'm reading this right now and I have to say it's... not great. The writing style of Stephenson seems to have been both crippled by capitulation to the "woke mo

I'm reading this right now and I have to say it's... not great. The writing style of Stephenson seems to have been both crippled by capitulation to the "woke mob" and to those detractors who harangue him for his signature tangents. The premise is fine, and the fictional tech and scenarios are typical Stephenson likely-to-come-true-in-some-form prophecy. There are many details which make it extremely and explicitly dated, which works well for historical fiction but this one is future prediction so it has huge potential for being absurdly wrong for readers in 30 to 50 years. I kinda feel like Stephenson got caught up in media hype and paranoia over the last few years instead of really digging deep. His portrayal of women, so far, is showing his age; it reads like Stephen King's attempts at portraying black people through the years, from absurd caricature to overly sensitive apologeticism as a male writer, except compressed into a single book. I'll revisit my opinion when I'm done, but I'm not impressed so far.