Scan barcode
A review by heathengray
Neuromancer by William Gibson
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Minor: Racism
Most non-english accents as written phonetically (eye dialect). I know it wouldn't fly on TV or Film, and this book isn't that old.