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sydop10 's review for:
Snow Crash
by Neal Stephenson
man, i had really high hopes. i bought this book after reading neuromancer and count zero (two books i’m a fan of) because i wanted to read more cyberpunk. people were saying this was a popular one and really good, but i can’t say i have the same sentiment.
it kind of felt like a chore to read this. it was funny at times in its writing and narration, which kept me reading for the first bit. but i feel like it took too long for things to happen. and then when they did, it was short lived. i found myself more excited about Y.T.‘s shenanigans than Hiro’s shenanigans.
Hiro gives me the vibe of an author that writes a character that he either sees himself to be or wants himself to be, like a teenage boy’s idea of the coolest guy ever. reminded me of the main character of red rising. i just could not connect and be interested.
all of the linguistic stuff and religion stuff really bored me i have to say (mind you i am not a linguistics or religion/religious history girl, so if you are then hey maybe you’ll like it) and every time a Hiro chapter came up where he was talking to that librarian to learn about how gods spread religion i was just skimming pages and waiting for Y.T. stephenson really wants you to care about how this religious spreading works so that you “understand” how snow crash works, but then Ng says it works through getting into cells nuclei. which is it? i don’t know. i just did not understand the point of all that research Hiro does when Y.T. and Ng are able to get a sample of snow crash. i understood the metaphor the first time he said it, that computers get viruses like brains/bodies can, yada yada. but after what felt like the bajillionth time reading about Sumerian mythology for pages on pages that i felt really didn’t add anything to the story or to the understanding of snow crash, the metaphor gets beaten into the ground. like we get it. it honestly could have saved at least 150 pages without all the infodumping.
also, was the casual violent racism really necessary in the story? that just made me kind of yikes a bit. and on top of that, the perverted relationship between Y.T. and Raven? are we serious? why are we writing a sex scene about sex WITH A MINOR? HELLO? THATS A CHILD! could their relationship really not have been like a big brother little sister thing? father daughter thing? i know her whole “last line of defense” thing was pointed to, but does the author really think that when push comes to shove and a female character gets into a desperate situation, the last line of defense is really a needle up her you know? because when push comes to shove the female characters will be sexually assaulted?
overall there are too many bad things about this book to drag it back to a good review. if you want a faster paced cyberpunk story with more fleshed out characters, read neuromancer or count zero by William Gibson.
it kind of felt like a chore to read this. it was funny at times in its writing and narration, which kept me reading for the first bit. but i feel like it took too long for things to happen. and then when they did, it was short lived. i found myself more excited about Y.T.‘s shenanigans than Hiro’s shenanigans.
Hiro gives me the vibe of an author that writes a character that he either sees himself to be or wants himself to be, like a teenage boy’s idea of the coolest guy ever. reminded me of the main character of red rising. i just could not connect and be interested.
all of the linguistic stuff and religion stuff really bored me i have to say (mind you i am not a linguistics or religion/religious history girl, so if you are then hey maybe you’ll like it) and every time a Hiro chapter came up where he was talking to that librarian to learn about how gods spread religion i was just skimming pages and waiting for Y.T. stephenson really wants you to care about how this religious spreading works so that you “understand” how snow crash works, but then Ng says it works through getting into cells nuclei. which is it? i don’t know. i just did not understand the point of all that research Hiro does when Y.T. and Ng are able to get a sample of snow crash. i understood the metaphor the first time he said it, that computers get viruses like brains/bodies can, yada yada. but after what felt like the bajillionth time reading about Sumerian mythology for pages on pages that i felt really didn’t add anything to the story or to the understanding of snow crash, the metaphor gets beaten into the ground. like we get it. it honestly could have saved at least 150 pages without all the infodumping.
also, was the casual violent racism really necessary in the story? that just made me kind of yikes a bit. and on top of that, the perverted relationship between Y.T. and Raven? are we serious? why are we writing a sex scene about sex WITH A MINOR? HELLO? THATS A CHILD! could their relationship really not have been like a big brother little sister thing? father daughter thing? i know her whole “last line of defense” thing was pointed to, but does the author really think that when push comes to shove and a female character gets into a desperate situation, the last line of defense is really a needle up her you know? because when push comes to shove the female characters will be sexually assaulted?
overall there are too many bad things about this book to drag it back to a good review. if you want a faster paced cyberpunk story with more fleshed out characters, read neuromancer or count zero by William Gibson.