Neuromancer by William Gibson Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Neuromancer
Book Review: Lives up to the hype
Summary: 4 Stars
Okay, now I understand what all the fuss is about. Gibson creates a vivd and engrossing world, entirely believable despite being so fantastic, and does so with a daring, sharp prose style that makes no apologies for bowling forward and leaving slow readers behind. He never holds you by the hand. Never indulges in overt descriptions and filling in all the blanks. It's just quick, cutting, laced with attitude, and on the edge of danger. This was fantastic stuff. Astonishing that this was his first novel. Thankfully I have another Gibson or two on my shelf; I'll certainly be reading them in the near future.Book Review: NEUROMANCER by William Gibson
Summary: 2 Stars
William Gibson's Neuromancer, which won the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award and the Hugo Award, is considered the seminal cyberpunk novel. Indeed, the profound influence of Neuromancer can still be seen in cyberpunk of all kinds, from Shadowrun to Deus Ex to Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Cyberpunk as it exists today largely reflects Gibson's vision, from the use of loner characters to the portrayals of hackers, technology and corporations to the very concept of cyberspace.
Neuromancer is the story of Case, a down-on-his-luck hacker, who gets a second chance at his career when he gets hired to do a mysterious hack for a mysterious employer with mysterious motives. In many respects, Gibson's concepts are excellent. His world, inasmuch as he describes it, is immersive.
The fundamental problem with Neuromancer is Gibson's narrative. He does a bad job of describing places, which makes the story jerky. The reader can easily keep track of who is doing what, but not why or where people are doing things. Actions just happen, seemingly arbitrarily, one after another, building toward a fairly underwhelming climax. The reader may very well ask, upon the novel's conclusion, "so what?". The story itself is fairly pedestrian - it seems like it would make a better video game than novel (and Deus Ex did borrow heavily from it, successfully). The book also suffers because none of the characters are particularly well-developed or sympathetic.
In Neuromancer, Gibson is, annoyingly, addicted to the use of the word "lozenge". He uses it frequently, for all kinds of things, most of which aren't actually lozenge. You could make a lozenge drinking game for this book. You could do the same with all the random drugs all the characters are on.
Undeniably, Neuromancer has style. It just isn't a very good story.
Book Review: Neuromancer
Summary: 5 Stars
Neuromancer was indisputably an important novel of the information age, but, no matter how important it was, it must still stand up to the critic's infamous question: was it any good?. This is a complex question to ask; the way this book is written will undoubtedly bring mixed reviews, since its plot and writing style are so unique. But, overall, I think it's safe to say that this book's historical value is matched by its value as a story; It has an extremely well laid out plot, complex, yet readable style, and it set the way for modern cyberpunk.
The plot of the book is a brilliant foreshadowing of how technology will evolve, and it was executed almost perfectly. A seamless blend of science fiction, action and mystery, this is one of the very few books I rushed to finish; even though I had a deadline to finish this book by, that wasn't the reason I read is so speedily. I rushed because the story was so engaging, I found myself needing to know what would happen next.
William Gibson's style of writing can only be described as subjective. It serves the purpose well, but may be disliked by some for its tendency to delve into extraneous detail; it may give a confusion to the reader. But, this style, in my opinion, only adds to the greatness of Neuromancer. The writing can almost be described like the technology this book talks about: efficient, complex, and cold. Gibson describes the world beautifully, yet he almost never uses writing devices like metaphors, similes, or hyperboles. This makes the book conjure up almost no emotion, contrary what many writers try to do. This may sound boring, but it gives the book a unique feel to it. Gibson still uses plenty of imagery to give the reader perfect mental images of the world he's created, which is superior in every way to details described by almost every mainstream modern writer.
Although this book was quite good, it did have one issue, which has to do with the vocabulary the author uses; many of the recurring words in the book were made up by him, for example, the Fletcher. In the book, it is a weapon, yet the book itself had no true description of what it was like; I had to rely on the internet to get an accurate mental image. In all, I'd estimate that there are about 20 of these made up words. It wouldn't be such a problem if there was a glossary in the book, but, sadly, there is none. But, honestly, this isn't much of a problem, because the meaning of the words is revealed because of the context.
Overall, this book's relative fame is rightfully justified. I can't think of any reason this book could be truly disliked; the whole thing is an excellent piece of literature that I'd recommend to any fan of science fiction. The aforementioned problem, the only problem I could find, is minute, especially when comparing problems to successes. This book has easily become one of my favorites, and I couldn't regard it any higher.
Book Review: Neuromancer
Summary: 5 Stars
If you search for an interesting book about IW (Information Warfare), you shuold by this one!
Neuromancer
Book Review: Not worth the hype, but worth the read.
Summary: 3 Stars
While I did enjoy the book, it wasn't anywhere the world's greatest novel that many seem to say it is. The plot was shallow, the characters were decent but also a little shallow. The world was an ok futuristic setting, defiantly fits as a cyberpunk genre.
The book is a little confusing, many of the aspects are never really explained. And the ending was a build to something great and then just fizzled out. But even with that being said I defiantly would recommend reading it because it's a ok novel.