Reviews with content warning for Drug abuse - Neuromancer

Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'

Neuromancer by William Gibson

35 reviews

pepper_mind's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

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

2.5

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unfoundation's review against another edition

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adventurous dark sad tense medium-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? Yes

4.75

One of my favourite books. Just finished a reread.

The world is chaotic and entrancing. The plot hurtles through it at speed, twisting this way and that, but never getting lost.

It’s incredible to realize that Gibson came up with so many of these ideas and imagery in 1984. The foundational text of cyberpunk. You can see so many themes and ideas stemming from this.

Case is a complex main character but ultimately you root for him. Like seeing a friend make some bad decisions. Molly is a tragic terminator, both intimidating and sympathetic. Armitage, Wintermute and Peter are all ominous antagonists. There are a host of other amazing characters who make the world rich and leave lasting impressions.

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amorphousbl0b's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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joblo's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

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

4.5

Goooood shit. A little hard to follow at times but it just adds to the vibe. In love with the language and writing style. Lots of very cool concepts and very interesting to see the beginnings of this genre/such a foundational sci-fi piece in general. Will def reread at some point!

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totallyglitched's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

5.0

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myllan's review against another edition

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adventurous reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.0

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binghebun's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense fast-paced

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

4.0

getting the ugly out of the way first — this book is racist. east asian people are used as set pieces, the turkish character and depiction of istanbul reek of islamophobia, and the zionites are just walking stereotypes of rastafarians. exploring cultures and countries beyond the vaguely-japanese-america of the typical cyberpunk world would have been great to read, but unfortunately gibson handles it all so stereotypically that it loses any interest or style. this book was written fourty years ago, and usually reading any classical or seminal work means you have to wade through this kind of bullshit, and i get that, but it still sucks. there is also a lot of objectification of women, a lot of talk about breasts, which unfortunately, again, i can’t say i’m surprised by considering the genre and time period. but, also again, it sucks.

onto the good — gibson writes with so much style it’s such a pleasure to read. one of my favourite lines is ‘’i’m doing just fine,’ case said, and grinned like a skull.’ i can picture in my mind exactly what that smile looks like, what case himself looks like, it’s such simple wording but evokes so much. i spent a lot of the narrative completely engrossed but also equally completely lost on what was going on, and i’m not ashamed to say i listened to a podcast outlining the plot of the book upon finishing to really understand what i read. i think part of it is gibson’s writing, but also just the conventions of older sci-fi which i am not accustomed to reading. i still had a lot of fun with this book and found myself always wanting to read more. it’s so fast paced and snappy that you can just keep reading and lose yourself to the world.

i really loved molly, and i’m so glad that gibson utilised the technique of having case being able to see through molly’s eyes to add her pov into the book. while i did say women are objectified in this book, the female characters are fortunately on their own absolutely fantastic — molly and 3jane are as interesting and fucked up as the male characters. case is a great protagonist, the antagonist is truly vile and so hateable, and the depiction of AI is unfortunately as topical as ever. the fact this was written in the 80s is honestly insane.

i found myself a little wanting on the descriptions of everything — a lot of cyberpunk to me is the aesthetic and i found that lacking, but i’m also coming at it with the 2024 perspective with 40 years of visual cyberpunk works, so i think that was an unfair expectation in the first place. the longer out from finishing this book, the more i like it. it was truly so unlike anything i’ve read before and i really enjoyed the shakeup from my usual reading. i definitely want to check out gibson’s other works and more works in the cyberpunk genre.

tw drug use, violence, sexual violence, thoughts of suicide

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josemoya's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Lo leí a través del sintetizador de voz y probablemente no sea la mejor manera de hacerlo. Tampoco lo leí en el momento adecuado de mi vida. Por ello me pareció confuso, más que algunas obras de P. K. Dick.
Sin embargo, el mundo reflejado en el libro (aparte los anacronismos que el propio autor menciona en una introducción escrita una década después) es muy interesante.
Volveré a Gibson más tarde, pero ahora creo que no es el momento.

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teainthelibrary's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad tense 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? It's complicated

2.5

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missdragon's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark tense

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

4.0

Gosh this was a really interesting, honestly great read and I'm not sure where to begin. This book is considered to be what created cyberpunk as a genre but also was the origin of a bunch of other things I didn't know about - the concept of cyberspace before the internet, the matrix as a concept and the Japanese/science fiction aesthetic you see a lot, especially in the blade runner movie. Think fast paced, heist, Nior type of thing. With the standard cast of characters you'd expect - they don't really develop much past their archetypes.

I loved how the book didn't hold your hand throughout it felt like being thrown into a world at a very quick pace, and you were expected to keep up, especially when it comes to understanding the world, and It's something I really value in science fiction books - there is no exposition you have to work things out, most things really, based on context. This was one of the things I really liked about Do Androids as well.

The dialogue was excellent, and I loved how it was integrated into the action and text of the book. The writing itself flowed really well, it was very entertaining and thought provoking. I liked how the story effortlessly moved between real life stable things, and the dream-like sequences of being in the cyberspace area.

This was very close to being a five star read for me, very very close, but I've opted for 4.75 stars for two reasons, firstly

The main character has casual sex with two of the main women in the story and it's written quite badly.

and secondly, sometimes information, in the form of random new science fiction words, were casually inserted into the rather fast moving text, with zero explanation as to what they were or what they looked like. As a reader this made it a hard to visualise some of the scenes, and I also don't know how accurate what I'm imagining is.

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