Reviews

Neuromancien by William Gibson

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mysticthoughts's review against another edition

2.0

Really interesting premise, but I couldn’t keep up with all the words I didn’t know or understand. The camera needed to be pulled back so I could know where characters were in terms of setting because I kept getting lost in paragraphs and not knowing what was really going on. Was thinking about 3 stars so maybe this is 2.5ish or something, but the ending execution of the climax and fallout and then all the loose ends were just briefly mentioned and no real satisfaction came through with the ending. Very difficult read to get through for me.

sidneyterano's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

For a while, it was the best sci-fi I’ve ever read. Gibson’s writing has an electric momentum to it and his existential expressions of cyberspace approach poetry. After the settings were thoroughly established, I lost a little interest in reading so many action/heist movie scenes back-to-back. Regardless, it’s fascinating how many terms, ideas, and visual worlds can be traced back to this book; a religious text for cyberpunk fans or anyone who has used a computer.

perseiv's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious 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

3.25

ruskoley's review against another edition

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challenging tense fast-paced

3.25

jdschmitz's review against another edition

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4.0

This book is one of the cornerstones of the Cyberpunk subgenre and is rightly considered a science fiction classic (it won the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel as well as the Phillip K. Dick award). The novel is essentially a heist story, following expert computer hacker Case as he infiltrates the stronghold of the powerful, secretive Tessier-Ashpool family in an attempt to liberate their captive artificial intelligence, Wintermute. However, nothing is as it seems in this complex and suspenseful novel, and the plot unfolds in deeper and deeper layers as Case penetrates the mysteries of what he's been hired to do.

Perhaps the strongest elements of Neuromancer are its worldbuilding couple with Gibson's writing style. These two things, admittedly, also make the book somewhat difficult to follow (a glossary and character list would have been very helpful), but many readers will be willing to overlook some confusion for the pure stylish complexity of the thing. Through terse yet occasionally lyrical prose, Gibson paints a gloomy picture of a future world where the high technology and hyperconnectedness of society that were already developing in the 1980s have, rather than living up to their oft-touted promise, instead only enabled exploitation and human perversion on an extreme scale. It is this aspect especially that makes Neuromancer worth reading; the world Gibson creates seems so likely--and so unpleasant--that most readers will be either fascinated or repulsed. Either way, they will get to experience one of the books that has played a major part in creating many of the tropes of modern science fiction.