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I am going to start with a minor spoiler (which is revealed by page 20): the guy from the epilogue is not the main character. I mentioned this because between the repugnant guy and the heavy cyberpunk slang load, I put the book down before page 20 and almost didn't finish it. And I own [b:Snow Crash|15778631|Snow Crash|Neal Stephenson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1420466735s/15778631.jpg|493634] and still recommend it to people.
Once you get past that you get to much more human characters (including multiple females ones - I'm pretty sure this passes the Bechdel test). And the story was interesting. Not just because I have known the real-life Valentine for a number of years (I thought so as I was reading, and the acknowledgments confirmed my hunch). Magic, confusion, government oppression of a feared minority, what's not to love?
It's an interesting world, and I'm interested to watch how the story evolves in the next book.
Once you get past that you get to much more human characters (including multiple females ones - I'm pretty sure this passes the Bechdel test). And the story was interesting. Not just because I have known the real-life Valentine for a number of years (I thought so as I was reading, and the acknowledgments confirmed my hunch). Magic, confusion, government oppression of a feared minority, what's not to love?
It's an interesting world, and I'm interested to watch how the story evolves in the next book.