スノウ・クラッシュ

the story doesnt really sock you in some funny parts kinda a messy story line

After having read and thoroughly enjoyed the Baroque cycle, I was surprised that I could not continue beyond 12 percent. The characters are weak, and much of the tech isn't that different from today but for the scope portrayed in the story. Neal did NOT do any research into how 3d worlds are rendered. People would not write code to create polygonal geometry it would still be done as it is today with a program such as Maya or Max. The real-time rendering would also be handled via what many games come with called a level editor. Think of Unreal Engine editor.
There are also some inconsistencies with how actual code would be handled. Why would someone's avatar just automatically download the data that is handed to them? It would get stored somewhere to be opened at one's discretion. argh. So many uninformed plot conventions I just couldn't get past it.

The concept and the plot of this story are fantastic. However, I found the writing style painfully bad. It made it hard to get through the book.

I absolutely love SF, but Snow Crash was probably the worst case of "information overload" I've ever attempted to read. Like others have said, the ideas presented are amazing, but Stephenson's presentation of them is more or less a clusterf**k. His characters are woefully unmotivated by anything but his ideas, and the pure amount of slang that isn't explained makes reading this confusing and frustrating. I cannot recommend this book when there are so many others out there that are digestible and have a plot that isn't just a Frankenstein's monster of ideas clumsily stitched together.

Sorry, I just could not get into it.

I hated this book. I don't see the hype. There were too many unnecessary story lines that went nowhere and the development was awful. Holy Info dump batman. Worse yet, those info dumps by an AI was a good part of the book. It's not much of a story and more of an undeveloped idea.

Amazon Kindle app won't let me finish this book without giving it a rating. So mr. Stevenson, please ask Amazon to fix their app. Good book, lousy company. This needs to be fixed.

I know this is a classic, but I hate the writing style. I read Stephenson's Command Line book and loved it, but this never developed for me. I read the first half and set it down.

Xtreme and juvenile story telling that hasn't aged well. Some prescient uses of VR and gaming technology that go on the be prophetic. Just not a very good story wrapped around it.

I could not get into this book despite its popularity.

I found the first present tense narration extremely off putting and did not find myself getting interested in any of the characters.

Did not finish. Deleted from e-ready after about 25% of the way through.

Dull, boring, existentialism drowns any story

Just okay. Nice job of world building, but I didn't find the characters that compelling. The story was somewhat confusing and ended abruptly. I read this after thoroughly enjoying Ready Player One and learning that the author cited this work as an inspiration. I liked that book much better than this one.

This book left me wanting. The setting and the concepts are interesting, but the author just doesn't tie anything together. I was utterly confused when the book ended.

I feel bad to join the two star crowd here. I love SF and I bought the paper version when I found this title on a list of the best 10 SF books to read (which shows how subjective our tastes are). Well, now I know I don't like cyberpunk or at least I don't like Neal Stephenson's writing. Sorry Neal, there are some great ideas and imagery in your book but I got bored after the first quarter. Just to give an idea of what kind of SF books I like here are few of the authors I admire: Arthur C. Clark, Isaac Asimov, Strugatsky Brothers, Stanislav Lem, Ursula K. Le Guin, etc.

I would only recommend this to a preteen with a poor grasp of reality. Total garbage. Only read it because it showed up on a beat sci-if list. How it got there I'll never know.
Don't bother- unless juvenile wish fulfillment is your thing.

Just couldn't get into it

Couldn't finish the first chapter. The author starts describing in detail every kind of trivial details of technology (like bits, bytes, pixels etc). Also most technologies I could see where not really "sci-fi" in the sense that anyone who likes the genre can imagine they'll be here very soon, if not present already.

Not my kind of book.

The story seemed to wander without purpose at times, and it was hard to get a grasp on the characters aside from the 2 main ones. Overall entertaining, but I just wanted to get to the end so I could read another book.

Giving this book 2 stars is generous. I'm not a fan of the writing style and there were so many holes in the plot and timeline...well... I don't want to expend any more energy on this book than I already have. Anyway, that being said, the author gets a bonus star for having a vivid imagination, which I can respect. This feels like someone's first book. I'll try another of his books but I won't finish it if it is like this one.