This is a convoluted description because of avoiding spoilers. In a future incarnation of Earth, a nanotechnologist named John Hackworth makes an illegal copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called the "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" with the intent of giving it to his young daughter. Before he can give it to her he is robbed of it by a gang of street urchins. One of the gang gives the book to his younger sister, Nell who rapidly finds herself engrossed almost to the point of addiction. The book is intended to guide the young women to "interesting lives." The Earth of the Diamond Age, where it is cheaper to make windows from sheets of diamond instead of glass, is divided into differing branches or tribes of society called phyles and the thetes, or those without a tribe. The prominent phyles are the Neo-Victorian New Atlantis, the Han (Chinese Celestial Kingdom), and the Nippon (Japanese) with many lesser phyles intermingled in their societies. With the help of the primer and Miranda, the actor who embodies its contents, Nell grows into a strong, self-sufficient, and worthy leader who becomes the leader of thousands of young women raised on the primer. I am undecided where to place this one in my " Best Stephenson Books" list. It's somewhere in the middle, better than his Baroque Cycle but not as good as Reamde, Fall, and Snow Crash.
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