Snow Crash

I really want to like this book, but there's something about it that just leaves me cold. Is it Stephenson's annoyingly declarative (and present-tense) prose? His habit of telling instead of showing? Or maybe just the way the main characters never do anything, just sort of hang around and bear witness to the unfolding of the epic plot? And what the heck is up with the ending anyway? (It never stops driving me crazy when Y.T. sleeps with Raven. That has never made any sense to me, from either of their perspectives.)I used to hate this book for its smugly self-assured pretentiousness, but rereading it now, that feels intentional and almost like parody. If nothing else, it could be in a museum of 90s hacker culture, capturing the egoism and machismo perfectly. Snow Crash is really no sillier than [b:Neuromancer 22328 Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1) William Gibson http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1285017005s/22328.jpg 909457], I guess, but Stephenson feels a real need to go into long explanations of programming (I understand, thanks) and (now-dated) technology.I would ultimately call this a cool idea and an homage to hacker culture that doesn't quite turn into a real story ever.