A review by florisw
Neuromancer by William Gibson

2.0

I think I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. The cool aesthetic and certain elements of the worldbuilding are definitely its strongest suit, and I certainly can appreciate how Neuromancer inspired a lot of subsequent sci-fi and cyberpunk (not least The Matrix). But reading this casually almost four decades later I can't look past the dated elements (a generous term). The early sex scene feels greasy and forced, the reference to a girl's "small hard breasts" is uncomfortable, and the description of Maelcum's "brown face" is really jarring for someone reading in the 2020s. But more than the occasional awkward passage, I found the entire narrative to be very inconsistently paced, resulting in a weird mixture of boring and confusing. 150 pages in and I still couldn't really tell if the main storyline had taken off yet. I didn't really feel invested in the characters, nor the plot, and I wasn't sure who to root for or be against. Near the end of the book I found myself doing double-takes on odd characters I couldn't remember the backstories of. This was exacerbated by perspective and time jumps in the middle of chapters which didn't make for a smooth reading experience. I'm sure many other readers will have had a blast with this book - just not me.