This is a hell of a book - sucks you in from the beginning and spits you out after a rollercoster ride through several layers of reality. One of the best books I've read in a while.

On the surface this is a story about an adict's quest to find his lost sister. Underneath it deals with some quite interesting topics like reality denial and addiction, incest, strong father figures, the role of authorities, coming of age...

The prose is somewhat cryptic with a unique lingo throughout the book and the whole setting is not very accessible and remains mysterious which worked nicely for me and added a lot to my feeling of immersion. The book is certainly not easy to read but there is enough action going on to keep you entertained until the end. It certainly worked for me - missed my train station to work twice. There is a bit of porn-ish material with transhumans in the end; I thought it ok but it might put some people off.

Overall a book I cannot recommend highly enough, entertaining, intelligent and powerful. Read it and be careful, be very, very careful... ( )

A wild and kaleidoscopic ride. ( )

http://bookchronicle.wordpress.com/20... ( )

Vurt is just not very good. When you look at what William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, Walter Jon Williams and others have done with this sort of thing, or even going back further, this is very disappointing.

Alternate reality via drugs and all is perhaps missing the point at little, at this point. Plenty of other cyberpunk tales to read before you need to waste your time with this one.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/01/vurt-jeff-noon.html ( )

I read this for my Fantastic Literature (Fantasy Lit) class in undergrad. Very trippy.