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.

Vurt is an odd beast. I found it hard to start with, but soon the world had sucked me in. In futuristic Manchester those looking for hallucinogenic experiences suck on feathers to enter virtual worlds, Vurts. Stash Riders, a bunch of miscellaneous losers, hunt for interesting feathers and try to find Desdemona, who got stuck in a bad Vurt.

Noon has cooked up a futuristic and surrealistic world. The language is colourful and takes some getting used to. The world isn't explained thoroughly; some readers will certainly find Vurt too strange a feather to swallow. However, if you can accept that the world doesn't always make sense, the story moves on with a good pace and the plot is interesting.

Vurt isn't the easiest and most accessible book, but it's worth the effort. If you like it, there's more: Noon has written several books set in the same vurtual world.

(Original review from my review blog.) ( )

Very cyberpunky. Lots of futuristic slang and fast-forward description. Lots of symbolism. ( )

One of my favorite books of all time. This was a great introduction to Jeff Noon's work.
I highly recommend this book to people who are fans of Philip K. Dick or William Gibson.
Full of great imagery and fantasic characters. ( )

British writer Jeff Noon's debut novel Vurt takes pulp science fiction to a new level. It's not necessarily a better level, mind you, but it's certainly a more twisted, doped-up, glazed-over, trip-inducing place than sci-fi has been in a long while.

Full review: http://www.davidlouisedelman.com/revi... ( )

One of my favorite books. It's a book I pick up and read sections of at random. ( )