http://spwebdesign.livejournal.com/64... ( )

It's great reading a near future story written at the end of the 80's twenty years later. Some thing are much more advanced in the book than reality, and some the other way around. It got a bit bogged down in the middle, when Stephenson was explaining everything, could have done that better but the story is great with good characters that have interesting relationships. ( )

I flipped back and forth between the audio version of this and a copy I checked out of the local library. The audio version is, in my opinion, excellent. The book itself bogs down in it's own ancient rationale a couple of times (particularly right in the middle of the book with the extended exploration of the library) but power on through because it's a really good book. ( )

I loved this book. The world is distopian, but not so badly as Neuromancer’s world. The characters are well done and you can care about them, unlike those in Neuromancer. Stephenson has a sense of humor, and he took 1992’s trends and extrapolated them into a world that I can see evolving around the world today. He didn’t get everything right- people aren’t gathering in cyberspace while wearing goggles to get benefit of realistic settings (thank gawd the trend for endless animations on websites died a few years ago), and no one is using skateboarders for high speed couriers- but the burbclaves (gated communities) are very real, as is replacement of independent businesses by franchises.

The novel weaves Sumerian myth, neuro-linguistic programming, cyberpunk, virtual reality, and a lot of other things together and the action never stops. Well, it does slow a few times, while conversations explain about Sumerian myth and how it applies to computer hackers and viruses from outer space, but he doesn’t over do the stop and talk about it routine. ( )

This is set in the near-future, and is sort of dystopian, I guess. It envisages a world with a meta-VR subsidiary, with the real world governed absolutely by corporations and their franchises. It’s a thriller at heat, but the writing’s so good that it becomes almost epic in nature, set in its own environment and peopled by so many different types of individuals. Definitely worth picking up. ( )