Within the Metaverse, Hiro is offered a datafile named Snow Crash by a man named Raven who hints that it is a form of narcotic. Hiro's friend and fellow hacker Da5id views a bitmap image contained in the file which causes his computer to crash and Da5id to suffer brain damage in the real world.
This is the future we now live where all can be brought to life in the metaverse and now all can be taken away. Follow on an adventure with Hiro and YT as they work with the mob to uncover a plot of biblical proportions.
Wrote a whole long review about why I didn't like it, but got bored of my own opinion.
In short:
While clever, the linguistic virus, Sumerian, and religion lessons were long and dull Characters unbelievable, and didn't really invest in them. Sex with a minor scene - didn't want that
Did like: the world the technology the prologue bit about pizza delivery. Loved that world building, really great opening! Then the main story wrecked it (for me).
The beginning of the book was a little hard to read. The dialog felt very stilted: like he was trying for some hip, sci-fi, noir, but it just didn't work. There were also some basic plot points that were extremely difficult to accept, like the idea that Mafia has built their new business model around pizza delivery, and the head of the Mafia would personally go to someone's house to apologize for a late pizza. Really? That's just absurd.
After the beginning, I like it more and more. There were still a few things that irked me, especially when technical terms were used incorrectly, but I tried to ignore that kind of stuff and just enjoy the story.
The story, for me, was fascinating. It blended many of my favorite things: the Internet, advance technology, language (esp. dead languages), and mythology, to name a few. There were a few parts …
The beginning of the book was a little hard to read. The dialog felt very stilted: like he was trying for some hip, sci-fi, noir, but it just didn't work. There were also some basic plot points that were extremely difficult to accept, like the idea that Mafia has built their new business model around pizza delivery, and the head of the Mafia would personally go to someone's house to apologize for a late pizza. Really? That's just absurd.
After the beginning, I like it more and more. There were still a few things that irked me, especially when technical terms were used incorrectly, but I tried to ignore that kind of stuff and just enjoy the story.
The story, for me, was fascinating. It blended many of my favorite things: the Internet, advance technology, language (esp. dead languages), and mythology, to name a few. There were a few parts that some people might find a little dry, such as long explanations of ancient myth and languages. I found those parts incredibly interesting, and they really helped draw me into the story.
This book is action, more than anything else. There is a lot of it, and it's very well written action. The idea for the book, I believe, was originally conceived as a graphic novel, and it shows. I can just see a lot of those images just popping right off the pages.
All in all, I found it mostly enjoyable, once I got past the first few chapters.
