Take a photo of a barcode or cover
baileyvanclieaf 's review for:
Neuromancer
by William Gibson
Spoiler
"Really, my artiste, you amaze me. The lengths you will go to in order to accomplish your own destruction. The redundancy of it! In Night City, you had it, in the palm of your hand! The speed to eat your sense away, drink to keep it all so fluid, Linda for a sweeter sorrow, and the street to hold the axe. How far you've come, to do it now, and what grotesque props...Playgrounds hung in space, castles hermetically sealed, the rarest rots of old Europa, dead men sealed in little boxes, magic out of China...But I suppose that is the way of an artiste, no? You needed this world built for you, this beach, this place. To die"I had to take a few days to sit with this book after I'd finished it, and get my thoughts in order before writing this review. If I had to describe Neuromancer in a single sentence it would be: this was a book that really made me reflect on what it means to be a human being in an age of technology. Even though this book was conceived of in Gibson's mind in the 60s and published in 1984, the questions he was asking then still feel applicable now.
The first thing that really struck me about this book was that nothing is black and white. No one is a hero, no one is (really) a villain - everyone we meet is just trying to survive in a world that has reached the point where being human feels like a disadvantage. I really love seeing this kind of thing in a book because oftentimes our protagonists are those individuals who are willing to throw everything they have away for a chance at something greater, and I just find that very hard to relate to. Neuromancer is a story of people just muddling through life. Not necessarily doing their best all the time, but getting through it somehow, and Gibson takes us on a breakneck journey to experience that with them.
The pacing can feel choppy at times but I think that this is done on purpose to reflect the unstable mental state of our protagonist, and I find that it adds to the atmosphere of the story. We're really in the thick of it with the characters, experiencing what they're going through in a very harsh and visceral way.
And it isn't just the pacing that had me turning page after page until I had stayed up far too late reading either - the plot and the overarching themes kept me riveted throughout. One line that stuck with me in particular is said near the end of the book and I think it ties things up nicely:
"Things aren't different. Things are just things."
After everything the characters experience together - everything they lose, and everything they gain - at the end of the story when everything is said and done, nothing has changed at all. They're still people. They've learned and loved and lost, but they still need to get up in the morning and survive another day.
Neuromancer feels like a thought experiment told through the medium of a novel. It explores the human disposition; our propensity towards self destruction, but also our curiosity for the unknown, and our ability to hope against the odds that somehow, everything is going to turn out alright in the end.
All of this takes place in the most imaginatively wonderful setting. Gibson creates the vocabulary to describe his world as he goes, and I enjoyed the sensation of a new world being built up around me brick by brick as I read. Honestly, one of the best examples I've seen of worldbuilding in a long time. It felt like he gave just enough detail for me understand the world without detracting from the plot. It was minimalistic without feeling barebone. I had the sense of have all the tools I needed to understand the story - without getting bogged down in the technical jargon of a brand new world.
Overall, it was a very enjoyable read. I suppose my only complaint is that even though I loved the characters, I didn't really feel like I could relate to any of them on a personal level and I do enjoy that in a story. Although, considering all the trauma they've experienced, maybe not being able to relate to them isn't a bad thing.