After reading Vurt I wanted to know more about the world of dystopian Manchester. Many things are not explicitily explained in Vurt such as Vaz, and the origin of the Vurt feathers. Nymphomation steps in and answers these mysteries (sort of). What I liked about Vurt and Nympho was that Jeff Noon explains the basic properties of some of these items while still leaving enough to the readers imagination and their own interpreation.

On to Nymphomation. While this book is not as good as Vurt (a hard act to follow) Nympho is good in its own right. Interesting characters, imaginitively written, you really can't go wrong with this book. I think Nympho actually borderlines Bizarro fiction rather than Cyberpunk/Sci-fi. But if you like hard cypberpunk and Sci-Fi you should still check this one out. If Amazon allowed half-star ratings this would be easily a 4 1/2 , with Vurt being a full 5. Read Vurt first though!

On a side note, I actually learned quite a bit about basic Chaos Theory from reading this book, while not explicitily spelled out as such. The ideas are there if you look for them (and sometimes when you don't).

Nymphomation takes place in a dystopic future version of Manchester, England, where the populace is in thrall to strange new lottery based on dominos. It's a bleak place where anything and everything is corporate-sponsored, including the schools and the cops, and the air is filled with bio-mechanical advert bugs called blurbflies. A group of renegade mathematicians and hackers thinks there's something fishy about the whole domino system and especially the so-called jealousy killings of lottery winners, so they decide to try to break the system. Sounds like a good idea, no? But...

I have really mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand it has a really great premise, some cool characters, a interesting and well developed backdrop and a writing style which is very modern, flashy, playful and fun to read, but (and this is a very big 'but') it's just not believable. Noon's trying to write science fiction, and he gets the fiction part really down pat, but he totally fumbles on the science, which makes it almost painful to read at times.

There are all kinds of things that are just inexplicable, (or maybe just badly explained), the main one being the blurbflies and their weird reproductive abilities, but all of the computer and hacking stuff seems like it was written by someone who doesn't have clue about computers and sounds almost magical rather than technological.

So I guess I'd have to give it a C. The writing really is quite fun, but the fakey-ness of all the science bits is just too much.

Noon has the best writing style I've come across in this whole 'cyberpunk' genre (or whatever people are calling it these days). His plots and environments are always very imaginative and he breathes a good deal of culture and life into his novels. Instead of focusing on overly-wordy descriptions of computer hardware and jacking-into-the-virtual-cyber-realm-via-the-com-link type thing that too many other authors fall victim to; Noon instead comes up with very different and surreal means of involving future technology and culture. Nymphomation wasn't as good as Vurt in my opinon, but, it was still an excellent read. Noon's writing has frequently inspired me to get up and do something creative.

This is possibly the WORST book that I have ever read! This phenominally badly written book is packed with obviously out of touch attempts to key into areas of youth culture. Cliched and naive imagery and dialogue somehow detract from a simplistic and uninventive narrative. It is predictable, boring and entirely uninteresting. Never read this book.

this was a really good book, i immidiatly picked it up after reading VURT (which in my opinion is the best book ever so read it!) I went into reading this book with very high expectations because VURT was soooo good. Nymphomation was good dont get me wrong i enjoyed it a lot but towards the end it gets a little stretched out. This is another Noon masterpiece but take my advice and read Vurt first.