Reviews tagging 'Racism'

Neuromancer by William Gibson

5 reviews

heathengray's review

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challenging dark mysterious sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I left things far too long to finally read this. I love cyberpunk games, movies, books, why hadn't I read the granddaddy of them all? 

Well, the good news is that this is cyberpunk. Through and through. There isn't a page, a paragraph, that doesn't smell of printed circuit board, feel oily, taste like old cigarettes. And though Cyberpunk has moved on so that the strange post-future Asian settings actually include people from them, not just caricatures or helpers, this is still OG Cyber Chrome.

But that's where the magic ends. 

The plot is near non existent. Things happen, one after another with no more thought than 'what would be cool?'. After a bizarre, redundant start where our hero spends a lot of time running from people out of misunderstanding, the mystery of a heist is the excuse for not really having a cohesive narrative, and we're taken to so many wonderful locals, but I just felt like I was waiting for it to end from the half way point. I just didn't care what came next. Characters are flat, and don't grow. They're given implants and grafts and they improve physically, but they're just the same at the end as they were at the start. They're good characters for the most part, just nothing happens to them.

The worldbuilding is just too good. It's too dense, and it gets in the way of everything else. Gibson should be telling us what's going on, but he can't help but tell us about a new sony tv or deck in his stilted punky prose style. That and he can't help but write out some god awful Japanese or Jamaican eye dialects, in an attempt to show how multicultural it all is. 

I loved the world. I think I hated everything else.

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shinylightblue's review

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challenging dark slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0


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sarah984's review against another edition

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

3.0

This is definitely a foundational work in the genre and the descriptions are lush and amazing. I love reading older sci-fi for the kind of grimy analog futurism and no one does that like Gibson. However, the main character is kind of pathetic and weird, the women feel like props, and the characters of colour are embarrassing.

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themysteriouserk's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

3.25

Gibson’s most famous novel isn’t his best; the tropes and stereotypes employed here range from old hat to offensive, and on the whole it feels more like a collection of stories artificially fitted together than a proper novel. Still, there’s a lot to love too, from the static sky and the setup for the rest of the Sprawl world to the memorable concepts and characters. A good read for Gibson fans and people really interested in the subject matter, but it doesn’t hold up as well or even really try to do as much as some of his newer novels (especially the Blue Ant trilogy), and feels dated both in its technological references and its lack of understanding about race and culture.

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storyorc's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Despite only understanding about 65% of what was going on at any one time, it was easy to get caught up in the frenetic heists.  Contains surprisingly little hokey VR hacking, a fascinating take on AI, and cybernetics that straddle the line between ingenious and depressing (so many new ways to monetise yourself!). Gobsmacked to find out the author hadn't even touched a computer.

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