“I was disappointed by Neuromancer. I generally find authors that I like then devour their entire body of work. I won't be ordering other Gibson books. Several reviewers have said that they would have rated the book lower, except that it was influential in creating a new kind of sci-fi genre and one mentioned the effort that had gone into the writing of this book.
That would be nice if this were a piece of art hanging on the wall I suppose, but for me it is a book that I want to read and be engaged by while I read it. I am the same way with my art though, Picasso may be a genius, but cubism looks stupid to me and I don't enjoy it. Same with this book, it may have started a new genre of writing, but I just didn't enjoy it.
Why? First of all, contrary to some of the posts here, it DID feel dated to me. Not so terribly that it ruined the work, but it added to my dislike. Mostly, I never felt the scenes were described well enough for me to picture them in my head. I trudged onward through the book to see what was going to happen next, but often I wasn't completely sure what had just happened. One reason for this was that the book was full of terminology and slang that was not well-defined or clearly explained. So I wondered what a Panther Modern was and what a coffin was used for and if it was for storage, why wasn't it safe? I felt like I had been dropped into a sequel and should have known a lot of things that I did not know and could not easily find out.
I finally gave up. It was a lot of work to read this book. I spent too much time trying to figure out what some slang term meant, instead of enjoying descriptive writing that painted a picture.
I do not recommend this book.”
tsteele93 wrote this review Saturday, November 4 2006.
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