ikillsunflowers's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.0
Prefacing this review with the face that I read this for a book club and would never have picked it myself.
I really dislike this. I know it was written in the 90s and there should be some leeway for things but this book aged very poorly. It feels like a self indulgent, self insert. The orientalism is very strong and it made me so uncomfortable. It felt like maybe it wanted to try and be satire but I didn't get that. It just felt racist, misogynistic and ableist.
There was absolutely no reason Y.T. needed to be 15 other than to fit some creepy fantasy.
I read somewhere that is was recommended reading a tech company and honestly when this is what people in stem have been hailing at the holy grail, it's no wonder there is so little empathy and diversity (I say this as someone in a stem career).
I will say some of the ideas we cool but the execution was all over the place.
I really dislike this. I know it was written in the 90s and there should be some leeway for things but this book aged very poorly. It feels like a self indulgent, self insert. The orientalism is very strong and it made me so uncomfortable. It felt like maybe it wanted to try and be satire but I didn't get that. It just felt racist, misogynistic and ableist.
There was absolutely no reason Y.T. needed to be 15 other than to fit some creepy fantasy.
I read somewhere that is was recommended reading a tech company and honestly when this is what people in stem have been hailing at the holy grail, it's no wonder there is so little empathy and diversity (I say this as someone in a stem career).
I will say some of the ideas we cool but the execution was all over the place.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Misogyny, Death, and Violence
Moderate: Racial slurs, Fatphobia, and Ableism
saturniidae's review
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
this book is uh. Wow.
I'm still not sure if I'm supposed to see Hiro as the incompetent nerd way out of his depth he clearly is or if I'm somehow supposed to think he's actually cool.
The first half of the book does a good job of building the anarcho captialist hellscape that the characters inhabit, but the second half quickly spirals into an incomprehensible mess with muddled themes.
Really exemplifies why silicon valley techbros are how they are, if this book inspired them.
I'm still not sure if I'm supposed to see Hiro as the incompetent nerd way out of his depth he clearly is or if I'm somehow supposed to think he's actually cool.
The first half of the book does a good job of building the anarcho captialist hellscape that the characters inhabit, but the second half quickly spirals into an incomprehensible mess with muddled themes.
Really exemplifies why silicon valley techbros are how they are, if this book inspired them.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Religious bigotry, Sexual assault, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Police brutality, Rape, and Sexual violence
Moderate: Ableism and Animal death
Minor: Racial slurs and Transphobia
No seriously this book's second half includes a 15 year old girl being brainwashed and groomed eventually culminating inSpoiler
her having sex with a man twice her agebrigitte's review
adventurous
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
2.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Ableism, Racism, and Racial slurs
Minor: Rape
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: Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual content, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Gore, Violence, Gun violence, and Death
Moderate: Ableism, Xenophobia, Fatphobia, Homophobia, Sexism, Misogyny, Drug abuse, Drug use, and Animal death
Minor: Pregnancy and Excrement
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