Reviews with content warning for Addiction - Snow Crash

Wildly disappointed in the book, it started off strong with a great setting and characters that should be memorable but the book fails to resolve any of its major plot lines. Leaving one of the two main protagonists in the middle of a precarious situation with no inkling of how they get away from it, and the other watching the last conflict from the sidelines. The book has a multitude of great plot hooks that are utterly forgotten when they become less than convenient to resolve.

Lastly the coerced intercourse between the 15 year old female protagonist and the violent 30-some odd year old antagonist that the author attempts to describe as a relationship is difficult to get through.

The book might have been formative to the cyberpunk genre but is certainly not the pinnacle of it. If I could go back and skip it I would.

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erikwmj's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny informative mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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strawberrypinch's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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bites_of_books's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging informative mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

2.5

I wanted to like this book much more but there were simply too many things that didn't do it for me.

The first couple of chapters I really enjoyed. As Stephenson described this futuristic world where corporations are the leaders of the world and where it is better to work for the Mafia than to get an education and try to have a traditional job, I could see how our world could end up like this in a couple of decades. The idea of the Metaverse was also very promising and interesting but unfortunately that never really took off.

Once Stephenson started to try to add too much logic to this futuristic, sci-fi world, it started to fall apart for me. There were chapters where one of the protagonists (called Hiro Protagonist ha) is basically getting a lecture from an AI about religious history, linguistics, and anthropology. Which are very interesting on their own but basically took me way out of the story and made my logic mind show up and be like "this makes zero sense." Then, in the next chapter we are back into exploring more of the ways that this corporation-led world is messed up and following (or trying to follow) the ways that our main characters are trying to solve the mystery of a virus that is affecting hackers but is also a drug in the real world... There's definitely mystery and intrigue but I ended up just wanting to know what was going to happen in order to be done with the book once and for all without really caring much about the main characters.

I am mostly frustrated because Stephenson has some great ideas, some really promising characters, and it all just ended up going nowhere for me. Like Y.T. was a super interesting character, a 15 year old girl who is super independent and wants to live her own life and not follow in her mother's footsteps as a government worker. Meanwhile she's just a means to an end and like that's it? Zero character development for anyone here. Oh and another super interesting character was Ng, a man who is paralyzed and heads one of the best security systems and rides around in a car that's been adapted so he can use it as a wheelchair/transportation/apartment/storage of very cool weapon system. His character was probably the best one who had clear intentions and purpose and I wish we'd had more of him throughout the book (he would have been a great main character!)

So disappointing... I'm not sure I'd want to try another of Stephenson's works, but who knows, maybe if he's done something a bit more cohesive and less all over the place I'll give it a shot.

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