スノウ・クラッシュ

It’s ok, but it’s boring, and tough to get through. A William Gibson fan fiction piece, trying too hard to be clever.

I ordered this thinking I’d get what was pictured. Not some raggity alternate edition that makes feel like I’m gonna break it if I touch it!

Could not keep my interest but I can understand liking it.

2.7/5
I've been wanting to read this one for a long time due to all the hype surrounding it, but after finishing just half of it I couldn't see what all the fuss was about.
It starts out fine, and builds this great cyberpunk/LitRPG environment, and made pizza deliverers seem like the coolest people in the world. I was into it, and was enjoying all the descriptions and car chases and character introductions (Y.T. is probably the best).
But once I hit the halfway point everything just stalled. The cyberpunk feel and atmosphere was gone, and it turned into just walls and walls of textbook-like information about history and religion (literally a quarter of the book is this). For the rest of the book it just got slower and less interesting for me. The main character, Hiro, even got less enjoyable, to the point where I didn't even want to read his chapters anymore. But the female protagonist, Y.T., continued to be pretty cool.

There were some cool and unique characters, and moments, but just nothing that could save this book for me.

I read Snow Crash mainly because of the comparisons to Ready Player One. But other than a young protagonist and the metaverse/oasis, they are very different novels. I did not enjoy Snow Crash nearly as much. It is not as much fun as RP1, and is too cynical for my tastes.

There is also a LOT of content about ancient religions, and a strained attempt to compare religion to a virus, both of which I found largely unnecessary and a drag on the story telling. Its like Stephenson figured, I did all this research into religion and mysticism, so I am going to impress you by putting EVERYTHING I learned in my new book.

Not that Snow Crash is bad. It is inventive. There is some good, smart writing. As a programmer, Stevenson's descriptions of computing systems ring true. If you are interested in cyberpunk and ancient Sumaria, and don't mind the bleak outlook, then you will probably enjoy it.

The writing is quite good and kept me reading. The problem is that the absurdist elements never really created a consistent critique that I would expect from satire and undermined the book if intended as serious speculative fiction.

The ending was also unsatisfying for me. It felt like it ended the way it did simply because the author didn't feel like writing anymore rather than actually bringing the book to a conclusion. There was no payoff and, ultimately, it made the book feel unplanned and unstructured. It's really a shame because there are some compelling ideas throughout the book but I will remember this book as a disappointment rather than for cool concepts like lingual hacking and the rise of consciousness.

That is how I describe fiction with tons of narrative and very little dialog. About 1\2 way through the book I started to feel as I did when reading Stranger in a Strange Land. Just another author using his characters and the world he created to espouse his views. Now I'm not so sure. The book did pick up the latter third and I almost started to care about the characters. Almost. Ultimately I adopted Y.T.s flippant attitude towards them.

to yield a satisfying conclusion. After much detail and intense scenes the author choose to leave resolutions of each story arc up to implication.

The Bad:

Tonal shifts. “Snow Crash” starts with some legendary levels of satire, but the consistency for said tone drops off after 50 or 60 pages. The satire remains, but the more the novel progresses, the more an afterthought that satire seems. In the middle of the book, the tone becomes one of ‘discovery/revelation’ that persists until the end… at which point the tone graduates to ‘let’s get this over.’ The shifts are never quite abrupt, but are somewhat stark.

Changing voice. “Snow Crash” never quite feels like it’s written by three different people, but the beginning, middle and end all feel radically different from one another. Some difference is to be expected as a story nearly 500 pages in the telling is unraveled… but there’s a difference between progression of events having a subtle impact on how the story is told and the feeling that the author is changing how they’re drafting the story in their own mind.

Wandering plot. Why did Hiro need to go to Oregon to learn that thing about Raven? The Raft was cool, but did it need to occupy so much time or focus for the reader to grasp its significance or otherwise appreciate the information Stephenson was offering? There are a couple of other plot points that beg the question ‘why that’ or ‘why present it this way,’ but the goal is to remain as spoiler-free as possible, so those points will remain unmentioned. There is a fair amount of wandering/meandering in the storytelling that’s hit or miss; for every enjoyable moment of superfluous world building or character development, there is a head-scratching moment to offset it.

The Good:

The Deliverator (the first ~50 pages, really). Y.T. The ideas behind Babel, protolanguage and religion, in general.

The Takeaway:

Entertaining if a bit dated (as far as many of the technical predictions or conventions are concerned). “Snow Crash” was no doubt a hell of a read when it was released: immensely entertaining; rife with observations and commentary regarding the era in which it was written (much of which is still shockingly relevant); offering statements about how we got to where we are; great observations about people, their hopes, dreams and motivations.

Recommended for: fans of cyberpunk; those interested in a topical examination of neurolinguistics; people looking for a wild, trippy ride that will trigger some fierce 90s nostalgia. Anyone that enjoyed “Neuromancer” or “Lexicon” may want to give “Snow Crash” a shot.

“It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists.”

“Software development, like professional sports, has a way of making thirty-year old men feel decrepit.”

“To condense fact from the vapor of nuance.”

“The Deliverator lets out an involuntary roar and puts the hammer down. His emotions tell him to go back and kill that manager, get his swords out of the trunk, dive in through the little sliding window like a ninja, track him down through the moiling chaos of the microwaved franchise and confront him in a climactic thick-crust apocalypse. But he thinks the same thing when someone cuts him off on the freeway, and he’s never done it-yet.”

“They do a lot of talking about Jesus, but like many self-described Christian churches, it has nothing to do with Christianity except that they use his name. It’s a postrational religion.”

I was looking forward to reading this book when I first got it, but it ended up being a bit disappointing. Felt as though the characters were not very fleshed out and the plot was a little messy until everything came together in the end. Giving 3 stars for the world building, the character YT, and for the action scenes, which were engaging and well written.

3.5/5 Stars.
Interesting book. I found individual elements very entertaining but couldn’t really grasp what was going on until the last 25% of the novel. I found Y.T’s story and character a heck of a lot more interesting than Hero’s, and found the juxtaposition of events, places, and characters confusing at times. That being said, I did read it all the way through, and I was on the whole, glad that I did.

Did not enjoy this. One of those books that seems to get on lists and liked by the in-crowd, yet reads like an affected, self conscious stab at I dont know what. Poor.

The writing is extremely creative and the stores are good, I just started to lose interest a little more than half way through. The book spends a ton of time providing background on the main protagonist, and just when you start to get to know him the book abruptly moves the story to someone else and starts character development all over again.
There are just too many new characters, places, and things to know about. I like an easy read, I don't want to have to take notes and map out things on a whiteboard to know what the heck is going on if I put the book down for three days. Unlike all of the other books I have purchased recently, this one remains unfinished although I am determined to get to the end of it.

I ready Ready Player One and I wanted to keep readying something to read that had the same feel. i was recommended Snow Crash so i picked up a copy. Although the world is cool and interesting, the book spends too much time on religious and philosophical aspects rather than on the world itself. i found myself struggling to finish towards the end.

Here we have a series of really disjointed characters that are too cool for rules so— you know, they talk hipsters, maintain appropriate emotional distance and are completely unaffected by mundane human realities like happiness or sadness or anything that would otherwise create a pleasant protagonist.

In all this sci fi book is painful since none of the rules dictating the world are apt to apply when the author needs to forward a plot point. No main character is ever in danger so suspense is absent. No character ever learns anything so purpose is absent.

Not worth reading unless you’re desperate.

This makes for a decent read, but requires a degree of forgiveness. The 'virtual world' theme seems to be in vogue right now and thankfully this story doesn't lean on it as heavily as some. The plot can be a little scrappy and loose in places, but there are also some genuinely wonderful moments of joy and humour.

I did not like the book at first.
Then half way through the book, I could not put it down. I was reading anytime and everywhere.
I love the concept.
I wish the ending gave us what each of the characters did after saving the world.

欧米でヒットした小説。
ただ、電子書籍化されていないのが残念。

欧米でヒットした小説。
ただ、電子書籍化されていないのが残念。

欧米でヒットした小説。
ただ、電子書籍化されていないのが残念。