スノウ・クラッシュ

The only reason I finished it is I liked the two main characters. The future as written from the 90’s is somewhat interesting and prescient to the person that recommended it to me. The ending falls off a cliff abruptly with one interesting character left behind. The writer must have become bored with it or never heard about tying a neat little bow at the end.

I read this book after reading many of his other books (Cryptonomicon, Reamde, Seveneves), so I had high expectations that weren't met. This is a reasonably good first novel from a really good author. Exposition is a bit clunky (not quite "Tell me Professor, what do I need to know?", but close) Interesting and motivated characters. Near-future post-government corporate economy. Mr Stephenson always tests your vocabulary. The main characters are two white-hat hackers, and a "skateboard" courier. Other, somewhat secondary characters include Raven, Uncle Enzo, whom I cannot describe better than Mr Stephenson does.

Thw idea of going into virtual reality was what tweaked my interest in the book. I started reading it and really go turned of about halfway through with the religious rants and the details of something I can care less about. I stopped reading it because the past 6 chapters I have read have been about religion and have put me to sleep.

I bought this as a gift for someone who really liked the book Ready Player One and they were disappointed and said this book is pretty boring. Maybe it gets better toward the end - but if you're buying this because you liked Ready Player One then maybe read a sample first.

I would rate the first half of this book 5 and the second half of this book 1.5. Once the Librarian character is introduced, it's all downhill. Which was just a shame because there were a lot of good, interesting, and downright enthralling ideas that just got all bungled up into a theoretical concept based on ancient civilizations. If you have to use a full chapter to explain an idea and then another full chapter to re-explain it, it's just a bad idea. And I really didn't need that much exposition for what amounted to verbal malware. Which is absolutely idiotic. Mr. Stephenson's editor(s) did him a huge disservice by leaving that jibberish.
I did finish this book so I could give an honest review, but would have probably been more content stopping at the halfway point and walking away. It never found it's way back to the exciting cyberpunk universe from whence it came. For all the time wasted on history lessons, the ending was rushed and not cohesive. Pretty disappointed overall.

Seriamente, non è previsto che a 1/3 di un cyberpunk tutto neon e occhiali a specchio ci si imbatta in una interminabile disquisizione para-linguistico-antropologica degna di un Dan Brown sotto spirito e non è nemmeno previsto che quest'ultima risulti ben più godibile del romanzo ospite. A conti fatti l'involtino distopico lascia un gusto amaro di pasticca satirica, il complotto paleoinformatico rimane una piacevole divagazione, viene da chiedersi quand'è che Stephenson metterà il suo talento al servizio di romanzo come si deve (SPOILER ALERT: non lo ha ancora fatto).

I love this book, this is the third copy I've bought. It's dreadful pulp and poor printing. Murdoch seems to be really running down Penguin.

Somewhere between necromancer and ready player one

Difficult to get into

...but Penguin have thought it clever to insert their logo between each chapter in this Kindle edition. This is absurdly intrusive. Returned accordingly.

Not quite as fast paced as I would have liked. Took a bit of persistence to get into it. However, still a good read.

Firstly I was amazed this book was released in 1992, the prescience shown by Stephenson is impressive, much of the virtual world and the tech used to access it seems perfectly believable by today's standards.

As for the story it is for the most part a fast paced adventure but it gets lost in places, I found myself skipping ahead through the discussions about aincent civilisations.

I enjoyed that the author explored the virtual world of the future.

I liked the sarcastically anti-utopian world built in the book, but all of the alternative history about the tower of Babel and biblical age language bored me to the point that I put this book down for months before finishing it. It finished strong though.

It started off with so much potential but right around the middle it became like someone’s thesis (language as a virus) in a story format. The elements were all there for a better story and it fell flat

Much like Dan Brown, we get pages of exposition that’s interesting but not rigidly accurate to history or theory. How much you enjoy this probably depends on how often you get lost clicking through Wikipedia. This doesn’t make up for a thin plot, and thinner characters. Still an amusing artifact of the 90s peering into the Information Age and virtual reality.
Oh and even for the 90s, if you have a fifteen year old character, don’t give them a sex scene with an adult. Thanks.

I didn't love it. The high octane opening seems to have fooled everybody. The opening feels like a short story that was later built on to make a novel, so irrelevant is it to most of the plot, and even to the protagonist.

It's very long and draws a lot of spurious analogies between biological and computer viruses that don't really fly, mixed in with clumsy pages of information about Sumeria or somewhere which turns out later to be relevant, but only as flimsy justification for a fairly boring plot device.

There's some good action, but it sure does go on a bit. The whole novel does. It should have been 100 pages shorter at least, and not as accomplished as people seem to make out - I'm really not sure why this didn't sink into the slush of post-Neuromancer 90s sci-fi and disappear forever. Its vision of virtual reality isn't just poor in retrospect, it's poor even for its time, unimaginative and filled with convenient rules that serve the plot but not the world-building.

Bizarrely, regular coders employed by corporations to do their jobs are referred to as 'hackers'. That's not what a hacker is, Neal.

Points for: Strong female lead, even if there's constant partial-nudity and sex references; fantastic opening chapter or two; consistent writing and plenty of action, if that's what floats your boat; diversity.

I can't say I recommend it, unless you mainly read sci-fi, in which case it's definitely not the worst of 90s sci-fi.

6.5/10
David Brookes
Author of 'The Gun of Our Maker'

This. Book. It started off so strong! I loved the setting and all the characters- until Stephenson made all the characters heterosexual tropes, the men either predators or hapless machos while the females somehow so smart they were unfazed by the gross abuse and/or immaturity of their love interests. Whatever. I eventually had to spend more time convincing myself to keep reading than actually reading. The greater plot and futuristic dystopia were super cool. Too bad I had to see it through eyes of the heroines.

It's really creative, but very convoluted at times... It's a good read, but it boga down a bit at most parts.

Decent story telling but missing something might re-read it.