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bites_of_books's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
2.5
I wanted to like this book much more but there were simply too many things that didn't do it for me.
The first couple of chapters I really enjoyed. As Stephenson described this futuristic world where corporations are the leaders of the world and where it is better to work for the Mafia than to get an education and try to have a traditional job, I could see how our world could end up like this in a couple of decades. The idea of the Metaverse was also very promising and interesting but unfortunately that never really took off.
Once Stephenson started to try to add too much logic to this futuristic, sci-fi world, it started to fall apart for me. There were chapters where one of the protagonists (called Hiro Protagonist ha) is basically getting a lecture from an AI about religious history, linguistics, and anthropology. Which are very interesting on their own but basically took me way out of the story and made my logic mind show up and be like "this makes zero sense." Then, in the next chapter we are back into exploring more of the ways that this corporation-led world is messed up and following (or trying to follow) the ways that our main characters are trying to solve the mystery of a virus that is affecting hackers but is also a drug in the real world... There's definitely mystery and intrigue but I ended up just wanting to know what was going to happen in order to be done with the book once and for all without really caring much about the main characters.
I am mostly frustrated because Stephenson has some great ideas, some really promising characters, and it all just ended up going nowhere for me. Like Y.T. was a super interesting character, a 15 year old girl who is super independent and wants to live her own life and not follow in her mother's footsteps as a government worker. Meanwhile she's just a means to an end and like that's it? Zero character development for anyone here. Oh and another super interesting character was Ng, a man who is paralyzed and heads one of the best security systems and rides around in a car that's been adapted so he can use it as a wheelchair/transportation/apartment/storage of very cool weapon system. His character was probably the best one who had clear intentions and purpose and I wish we'd had more of him throughout the book (he would have been a great main character!)
So disappointing... I'm not sure I'd want to try another of Stephenson's works, but who knows, maybe if he's done something a bit more cohesive and less all over the place I'll give it a shot.
The first couple of chapters I really enjoyed. As Stephenson described this futuristic world where corporations are the leaders of the world and where it is better to work for the Mafia than to get an education and try to have a traditional job, I could see how our world could end up like this in a couple of decades. The idea of the Metaverse was also very promising and interesting but unfortunately that never really took off.
Once Stephenson started to try to add too much logic to this futuristic, sci-fi world, it started to fall apart for me. There were chapters where one of the protagonists (called Hiro Protagonist ha) is basically getting a lecture from an AI about religious history, linguistics, and anthropology. Which are very interesting on their own but basically took me way out of the story and made my logic mind show up and be like "this makes zero sense." Then, in the next chapter we are back into exploring more of the ways that this corporation-led world is messed up and following (or trying to follow) the ways that our main characters are trying to solve the mystery of a virus that is affecting hackers but is also a drug in the real world... There's definitely mystery and intrigue but I ended up just wanting to know what was going to happen in order to be done with the book once and for all without really caring much about the main characters.
I am mostly frustrated because Stephenson has some great ideas, some really promising characters, and it all just ended up going nowhere for me. Like Y.T. was a super interesting character, a 15 year old girl who is super independent and wants to live her own life and not follow in her mother's footsteps as a government worker. Meanwhile she's just a means to an end and like that's it? Zero character development for anyone here. Oh and another super interesting character was Ng, a man who is paralyzed and heads one of the best security systems and rides around in a car that's been adapted so he can use it as a wheelchair/transportation/apartment/storage of very cool weapon system. His character was probably the best one who had clear intentions and purpose and I wish we'd had more of him throughout the book (he would have been a great main character!)
So disappointing... I'm not sure I'd want to try another of Stephenson's works, but who knows, maybe if he's done something a bit more cohesive and less all over the place I'll give it a shot.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Homophobia, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Sexual content, Kidnapping, and Classism
sakusha's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
informative
lighthearted
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
Content warning: the book contains an adult having sex with a minor.
Reminded me of Ready Player One and Jennifer Government, but I liked both of those better than this book.
Takes place in a futuristic world where corporations have surpassed the government, and there’s a lot of violence, crime, and poor living conditions. The beginning has lots of cussing and is wordy with a lot of elaborate similes. There are so many slangs and new words and terms that it’s like the book is half in another language. That makes it difficult to read, difficult to stay focussed and engaged, and therefore boring.
A lot of things dont make sense. Hiro and YT meet by chance. They partner up. Why? YT’s age is stated, but not Hiro’s.
Hiro’s last name is seriously Protagonist? Was he born this way or did he choose his own name?
Who are Roadkill and Uncle Enzo? There’s never any explanation as far as I can remember. First I assumed Enzo was Hiro’s actual uncle and boss. Then I thought it was the new name for Uncle Sam. After that I didn’t know who he was. Why does Uncle Enzo care so much about YT’s mother when he has never met her, unless he has and the author didn’t say so (171)?
It’s confusing that in one chapter Hiro is swordfighting in the metaverse, and in the next chapter he’s breaking YT out of jail. Then the next chapter he’s swordfighting in the metaverse again. Is he doing both at once? Would be nice if the book were more clear about this.
Then why does a cop let Hiro tag along while chasing down Raven? Why does Hiro take time out of his life to investigate snow crash? He isnt a detective or cop. His friend was affected by snow crash, but Hiro hardly bats an eye. He doesn’t seem to care at all. So what is his motivation for taking on the investigation? The book never explains.
Hiro takes the trouble to bail YT out of jail early in the book, which maybe was to pay her back for helping him earlier, but he doesnt seem to ever panic about her being kidnapped (349). He just rescues her without thought or feeling. Actually maybe he doesnt try to rescue her. Maybe he is just using her for information. Would be nice if the book were more clear on character motivations.
Hiro gets very wealthy, but chooses to spend his money on a new motorcycle that soon gets destroyed (which he seems to not even care about); he doesn’t even think about spending his wealth on upgrading his housing, which is a storage box.
The whole book is like bouncing randomly from one adventure to the next with no thought or reflection by the characters.
YT’s mother gets in trouble and there’s no explanation for how she gets out of it.
Sushi K does a concert, and we’re never told whether the audience liked it or not (138). Why even include the concert in the book? Just for laughs?
The author might’ve said he didn’t include the audience reaction or character reflections or motivations because it’d make the book longer. Well, he could’ve cut out most of the first chapter which was just talking about Hiro delivering pizza which had no relevance to the rest of the story. And I suppose the concert had no relevance either.
Error by the author: there’s hyperinflation making people carry around trillions of dollars, but it still only takes a quarter to use a pay phone (440).
There were some accurate predictions made by the author, some of which might’ve already been known at the time the book was written (1992): “Smart” technology (4, 27), digital screens in vehicles including maps (4), Metaverse (18), flameproof clothing that causes cancer (18), fiber optic Internet (21), PVP fighting (25), avatars (35), NPCs (the book calls them daemons) (55), cell phones with voice command (77-78), Google earth & GPS (106), data and images through phones (115), reality TV (132), and harmful vaccines (404).
“The more you use it—the more viruses you get exposed to—the better your immune system becomes” (429). So stop vaccinating to protect yourself, and let your immune system fight off viruses the natural way. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And almost all the illnesses vaccines are supposed to protect you from have a very low morality rate.
Possibly the kind of woman that beta males find attractive: tomboys like YT, or sarcastic nerds like Juanita (56). Juanita “had long, glossy black hair that had never been subjected to any chemical process other than regular shampooing. She didn’t wear blue stuff on her eyelids. Her clothing was dark, tailored, restrained. And she didn’t take shit from anyone, not even her professors, which seemed shrewish and threatening to him at the time” (58). Or maybe it’s the kind they settle for since they can’t get the attractive bimbos who go for alpha males. Beta males are unhappy because they settle for the females they think are betas, but the “beta females” end up being strong independent types who the beta males can’t control or dominate, and therefore the beta males end up unhappy. Beta males are in a paradox of wanting to dominate but being too shy or unconfident to do it, so they end up with a dominant woman which makes them frustrated because she doesn’t satisfy his inner desire.
Juanita believes “that no matter how good it is, the Metaverse is distorting the way people talk to each other” (64). I would’ve liked the book to explore this concept more. Instead, the book is focussed on adventures which are brainless aside from their tie to ancient Sumeria. The villain in the book just wants shallow revenge. A better storyline would be either the hero or villain wanting to bring down the Metaverse for how it’s ruining society. But it seems that the main people who use the Metaverse are hackers, not the general public. And “hacker” in this book seems to mean a computer programmer, or maybe just a computer user.
The most interesting parts of this book for me were the parts that had to do with ancient history and religion, and I could have just read a nonfiction book for that.
Juanita says: “99% of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire 100% is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people’s minds” (69). “Anyone who takes the trouble to study the gospels can see that the bodily resurrection is a myth that was tacked onto the real story several years after the real histories were written” (201).
I learned some things about the Bible: I already knew Pharisees were the group of Jews who took the religious laws very seriously and expected everyone to follow those laws. But I learned more about the other two groups of Jews: the Sadducees believed that that there was no spiritual world, only the material world. And Essenes were like communist monks who tried to make their bodies and food as pure/clean as possible. “They even had their own version of the Gospels in which Jesus healed possessed people, not with miracles, but by driving parasites, such as tapeworm, out of their body. These parasites are considered to be synonymous with demons” (209). That’s in line with my theory that Jesus healed people like a doctor, not like a witch.
Asherah was a consort of El, AKA Yahweh. Asherah was AKA Elat, Dione/Rhea (Greek), Nintu/Ninhursag (Sumerian), Tannit/Hawwa (Canaanites), which is another name for Eve (227-228). Tannit means “the one of the serpent.” She was worshipped by “everyone who lived between India and Spain, from the second millennium B.C. Up into the Christian era. With the exception of the Hebrews, who only worshipped her until the religious reforms of Hezekiah and, later, Josiah” (228). Hawwa is an ophidian (serpent) mother goddess associated with trees (231).
The Hebrews were actually not monotheists, they were monolatrists; they didn’t deny the existence of other gods, but they were only supposed to worship Yahweh (228). That makes lines in the Bible make sense when God tells people to worship him, not because he’s the only god, but because he’s a jealous god. And when the Bible says “let us make man in our image.”
Asherah was purged from Judaism by deuteronomics who rewrote and reorganized the old tales (228). The deuteronomics were in favor of monarchy and centralizing the religion in the Temple in Jerusalem (229). They were responsible for the Bible being written and people going to church and reading it rather than making animal sacrifices and spreading the religion orally (229).
“All cultures seem to have a myth about Paradise, and the Fall from Paradise” (232).
“According to the interpretation of Hvidberg and, later, Wyatt, Adam in his garden is a parable for the king in his sanctuary, specifically King Hosea, who ruled the northern kingdom until it was conquered by Sargon II in 722 BC. . . . ‘Eden,’ which can be understood simply as the Hebrew word for ‘delight,’ stands for the happy state in which the king existed prior to the conquest. The expulsion from Eden to the bitter lands to the east is a parable for the massive deportation of Israelites to Assyria following Sargon II’s victory. According to this interpretation, the king was enticed away from the path of righteousness by the cult of El, with its associated worship of Asherah. . . . And his association with Asherah somehow caused him to be conquered—so when the deuteronomists reached Jerusalem, they recast the Adam and Eve story as a warning to the leaders of the southern kingdom” (233).
Babel literally means “gate of god” (398). When people all speak the same language and live in close proximity, things spread quickly (400). That’s good if the thing spreading is a good thing (revolting against corrupt leader), but bad if the thing spreading is a bad thing (virus).
“After the crucifixion, the apostles went to his tomb hoping to find his body and instead found nothing. The message was clear enough: we are not to idolize Jesus, because his ideas stand alone, his church is no longer centralized in one person but dispersed among all the people. People who were used to the rigid theocracy of the Pharisees couldn’t handle the idea of a popular, nonhierarchical church. They wanted popes and bishops and priests. And so the myth of the Resurrection was added onto the gospels. The message was changed to a form of idolatry” (401-402). I don’t think the Pharisees wanted popes and bishops; that was the Romans who wanted that. And the Pharisees were never in favor of Jesus, before or after he died. It was his followers who spread the lie about his resurrection, in order to form a new religion and to make people believe he was god’s son instead of the son of man.
Reminded me of Ready Player One and Jennifer Government, but I liked both of those better than this book.
Takes place in a futuristic world where corporations have surpassed the government, and there’s a lot of violence, crime, and poor living conditions. The beginning has lots of cussing and is wordy with a lot of elaborate similes. There are so many slangs and new words and terms that it’s like the book is half in another language. That makes it difficult to read, difficult to stay focussed and engaged, and therefore boring.
A lot of things dont make sense. Hiro and YT meet by chance. They partner up. Why? YT’s age is stated, but not Hiro’s.
Hiro’s last name is seriously Protagonist? Was he born this way or did he choose his own name?
Who are Roadkill and Uncle Enzo? There’s never any explanation as far as I can remember. First I assumed Enzo was Hiro’s actual uncle and boss. Then I thought it was the new name for Uncle Sam. After that I didn’t know who he was. Why does Uncle Enzo care so much about YT’s mother when he has never met her, unless he has and the author didn’t say so (171)?
The whole book is like bouncing randomly from one adventure to the next with no thought or reflection by the characters.
YT’s mother gets in trouble and there’s no explanation for how she gets out of it.
Sushi K does a concert, and we’re never told whether the audience liked it or not (138). Why even include the concert in the book? Just for laughs?
The author might’ve said he didn’t include the audience reaction or character reflections or motivations because it’d make the book longer. Well, he could’ve cut out most of the first chapter which was just talking about Hiro delivering pizza which had no relevance to the rest of the story. And I suppose the concert had no relevance either.
Error by the author: there’s hyperinflation making people carry around trillions of dollars, but it still only takes a quarter to use a pay phone (440).
There were some accurate predictions made by the author, some of which might’ve already been known at the time the book was written (1992): “Smart” technology (4, 27), digital screens in vehicles including maps (4), Metaverse (18), flameproof clothing that causes cancer (18), fiber optic Internet (21), PVP fighting (25), avatars (35), NPCs (the book calls them daemons) (55), cell phones with voice command (77-78), Google earth & GPS (106), data and images through phones (115), reality TV (132), and harmful vaccines (404).
“The more you use it—the more viruses you get exposed to—the better your immune system becomes” (429). So stop vaccinating to protect yourself, and let your immune system fight off viruses the natural way. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And almost all the illnesses vaccines are supposed to protect you from have a very low morality rate.
Possibly the kind of woman that beta males find attractive: tomboys like YT, or sarcastic nerds like Juanita (56). Juanita “had long, glossy black hair that had never been subjected to any chemical process other than regular shampooing. She didn’t wear blue stuff on her eyelids. Her clothing was dark, tailored, restrained. And she didn’t take shit from anyone, not even her professors, which seemed shrewish and threatening to him at the time” (58). Or maybe it’s the kind they settle for since they can’t get the attractive bimbos who go for alpha males. Beta males are unhappy because they settle for the females they think are betas, but the “beta females” end up being strong independent types who the beta males can’t control or dominate, and therefore the beta males end up unhappy. Beta males are in a paradox of wanting to dominate but being too shy or unconfident to do it, so they end up with a dominant woman which makes them frustrated because she doesn’t satisfy his inner desire.
Juanita believes “that no matter how good it is, the Metaverse is distorting the way people talk to each other” (64). I would’ve liked the book to explore this concept more. Instead, the book is focussed on adventures which are brainless aside from their tie to ancient Sumeria. The villain in the book just wants shallow revenge. A better storyline would be either the hero or villain wanting to bring down the Metaverse for how it’s ruining society. But it seems that the main people who use the Metaverse are hackers, not the general public. And “hacker” in this book seems to mean a computer programmer, or maybe just a computer user.
The most interesting parts of this book for me were the parts that had to do with ancient history and religion, and I could have just read a nonfiction book for that.
Juanita says: “99% of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire 100% is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people’s minds” (69). “Anyone who takes the trouble to study the gospels can see that the bodily resurrection is a myth that was tacked onto the real story several years after the real histories were written” (201).
I learned some things about the Bible: I already knew Pharisees were the group of Jews who took the religious laws very seriously and expected everyone to follow those laws. But I learned more about the other two groups of Jews: the Sadducees believed that that there was no spiritual world, only the material world. And Essenes were like communist monks who tried to make their bodies and food as pure/clean as possible. “They even had their own version of the Gospels in which Jesus healed possessed people, not with miracles, but by driving parasites, such as tapeworm, out of their body. These parasites are considered to be synonymous with demons” (209). That’s in line with my theory that Jesus healed people like a doctor, not like a witch.
Asherah was a consort of El, AKA Yahweh. Asherah was AKA Elat, Dione/Rhea (Greek), Nintu/Ninhursag (Sumerian), Tannit/Hawwa (Canaanites), which is another name for Eve (227-228). Tannit means “the one of the serpent.” She was worshipped by “everyone who lived between India and Spain, from the second millennium B.C. Up into the Christian era. With the exception of the Hebrews, who only worshipped her until the religious reforms of Hezekiah and, later, Josiah” (228). Hawwa is an ophidian (serpent) mother goddess associated with trees (231).
The Hebrews were actually not monotheists, they were monolatrists; they didn’t deny the existence of other gods, but they were only supposed to worship Yahweh (228). That makes lines in the Bible make sense when God tells people to worship him, not because he’s the only god, but because he’s a jealous god. And when the Bible says “let us make man in our image.”
Asherah was purged from Judaism by deuteronomics who rewrote and reorganized the old tales (228). The deuteronomics were in favor of monarchy and centralizing the religion in the Temple in Jerusalem (229). They were responsible for the Bible being written and people going to church and reading it rather than making animal sacrifices and spreading the religion orally (229).
“All cultures seem to have a myth about Paradise, and the Fall from Paradise” (232).
“According to the interpretation of Hvidberg and, later, Wyatt, Adam in his garden is a parable for the king in his sanctuary, specifically King Hosea, who ruled the northern kingdom until it was conquered by Sargon II in 722 BC. . . . ‘Eden,’ which can be understood simply as the Hebrew word for ‘delight,’ stands for the happy state in which the king existed prior to the conquest. The expulsion from Eden to the bitter lands to the east is a parable for the massive deportation of Israelites to Assyria following Sargon II’s victory. According to this interpretation, the king was enticed away from the path of righteousness by the cult of El, with its associated worship of Asherah. . . . And his association with Asherah somehow caused him to be conquered—so when the deuteronomists reached Jerusalem, they recast the Adam and Eve story as a warning to the leaders of the southern kingdom” (233).
Babel literally means “gate of god” (398). When people all speak the same language and live in close proximity, things spread quickly (400). That’s good if the thing spreading is a good thing (revolting against corrupt leader), but bad if the thing spreading is a bad thing (virus).
“After the crucifixion, the apostles went to his tomb hoping to find his body and instead found nothing. The message was clear enough: we are not to idolize Jesus, because his ideas stand alone, his church is no longer centralized in one person but dispersed among all the people. People who were used to the rigid theocracy of the Pharisees couldn’t handle the idea of a popular, nonhierarchical church. They wanted popes and bishops and priests. And so the myth of the Resurrection was added onto the gospels. The message was changed to a form of idolatry” (401-402). I don’t think the Pharisees wanted popes and bishops; that was the Romans who wanted that. And the Pharisees were never in favor of Jesus, before or after he died. It was his followers who spread the lie about his resurrection, in order to form a new religion and to make people believe he was god’s son instead of the son of man.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual content
brycestevenwilley's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Weird book, sumerian myths are incredibly strange, and I still have no idea why every tech company wants to recreate the Street. But good read, fascinating throughout, if a little overly explainatory at time.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Gun violence, Sexual content, Violence, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail
booksthatburn's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
SNOW CRASH is a cyberpunk fantasy starts with a high-stakes pizza delivery and ends with some cool explosives, taking a path that leads through many burbclaves, at least one cult, and a lot of exposition that relies on fascinations explanations of ancient Sumer to discuss a computer virus that's messing up brains.
It's using and remixing available stereotypes to their limit to create cartoonishly distilled essences that allow for quick action in the partitioned but not wholly divided setting. There are stark boundary lines all over the place, governing laws, behavior, and life-or-death stakes for everyone within these borders, lit by each Franchise's signage and governed by their franchisee manuals. Where the grooves of life are so well worn around most denizens that they barely notice a disturbance to their routines, unless they’re the protagonist, Hiro Protagonist or perhaps the Kourier Y.T. There's a franchise for most things, and some of those things are racism. There's some fatphobia and scattered ableist language which seem to be regular levels of bigotry instead of forming the kind of pointed social commentary which underpins and incorporates the other -isms.
Hiro’s biracial identity (Black/Japanese) matters to the story and exists for more than the surface-level excuse to name the main character “hero protagonist” with alternate spelling. There are several moments where he figures out things based on how someone reacts (or doesn’t) to his appearance and background.
Y.T. isn't as introspective as Hiro, but she gets a decent amount of focus and her perspective is integral to the story, both as an active agent and as an observer with a very different point of view from Hiro, a non-hacker one.
As a cultural artifact, this feels more prescient than it perhaps has a right to be because a lot of people have tried to make things more like the world imagined here, and that's not always a good thing. Reading it now is strange because even something like the word "avatar" as a representation of one's physical self in a digital context was popularized by this book and so it doesn't feel new, though it was at the time.
It's using and remixing available stereotypes to their limit to create cartoonishly distilled essences that allow for quick action in the partitioned but not wholly divided setting. There are stark boundary lines all over the place, governing laws, behavior, and life-or-death stakes for everyone within these borders, lit by each Franchise's signage and governed by their franchisee manuals. Where the grooves of life are so well worn around most denizens that they barely notice a disturbance to their routines, unless they’re the protagonist, Hiro Protagonist or perhaps the Kourier Y.T. There's a franchise for most things, and some of those things are racism. There's some fatphobia and scattered ableist language which seem to be regular levels of bigotry instead of forming the kind of pointed social commentary which underpins and incorporates the other -isms.
Hiro’s biracial identity (Black/Japanese) matters to the story and exists for more than the surface-level excuse to name the main character “hero protagonist” with alternate spelling. There are several moments where he figures out things based on how someone reacts (or doesn’t) to his appearance and background.
Y.T. isn't as introspective as Hiro, but she gets a decent amount of focus and her perspective is integral to the story, both as an active agent and as an observer with a very different point of view from Hiro, a non-hacker one.
As a cultural artifact, this feels more prescient than it perhaps has a right to be because a lot of people have tried to make things more like the world imagined here, and that's not always a good thing. Reading it now is strange because even something like the word "avatar" as a representation of one's physical self in a digital context was popularized by this book and so it doesn't feel new, though it was at the time.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual content, Violence, and Blood
Moderate: Ableism, Animal death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Fatphobia, Homophobia, Misogyny, Sexism, and Xenophobia
Minor: Excrement and Pregnancy
selfsoulfriend's review against another edition
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
Several of my friends have recommended this book to me, describing it as a better Ready Player One, so I decided to take them up on it because I trust their opinions. What they (and the reviews I read) failed to mention was the casual racism and cultural insensitivity that turns up every other page. It honestly ruined the book for me. It's not overtly hateful, mostly just offensive comments/ stereotypes. If it was only once or twice I'd be willing to look past it since the book is 30+ years old, but there's way too much of it for comfort. There's also an uncomfortably explicit sex scene between a 15 year old character and a much older man. I finally let myself put the book down about 80 pages from the end when a character named Tr*nny was introduced. This book just kept getting worse and the plot wasn't good enough to redeem it. The story felt very disorganized, was badly paced, and there were a bunch of huge infodumps where maybe a quarter of the information was actually relevant. Several chapters are literally the main character getting a history lecture from an AI and he just gets fed the information on a silver platter when it's convenient to the plot. I wish I was exaggerating. If you're trying to decide whether or not to read it, I'd say it's not worth it. I honestly don't know why it's so highly regarded as a cyberpunk must read.
(Side note. Even considering all its flaws it's still better than Ready Player One)
(Side note. Even considering all its flaws it's still better than Ready Player One)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship and Sexual content
Moderate: Racial slurs and Racism
Minor: Homophobia and Transphobia
rubybastille's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
This was GREAT and INSANE. Sometimes too insane, and with too many infodumps, but I loved the characters and the shameless Rule-of-Cool stuff that goes on.
2024 reread: actually I still mostly agree with my original review. It’s nice to read cyberpunk that has a sense of humor and that makes an attempt (in a now-dated-feeling-but-at-least-it-tried 90s way) to include and even center characters from marginalized groups. The infodumps get old, though, especially Hiro’s lecture near the end.
2024 reread: actually I still mostly agree with my original review. It’s nice to read cyberpunk that has a sense of humor and that makes an attempt (in a now-dated-feeling-but-at-least-it-tried 90s way) to include and even center characters from marginalized groups. The infodumps get old, though, especially Hiro’s lecture near the end.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Blood, Sexual harassment, and War
Moderate: Homophobia and Racial slurs
confusedmuse's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
hopeful
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cursing, Drug use, Gun violence, Homophobia, Racial slurs, Racism, Self harm, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Kidnapping, Religious bigotry, and Car accident