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Just okay. The important ideas are the anarcho-capitalism and languages as virus themes. There are 30 reviews that summarize the plot of Snow Crash. But Snow Crash is a bit of an idea novel. If you like Stephenson's other books, you probably like Snow Crash. I found the pacing a little uneven, and it certainly feels like an author's first full novel. isn't really the main protagonist.
Finally, the novel, in my mind, closes with several poorly closed threads that are not carried on in future novels. So I'm going to skip that.The book was okay. In many ways, these serve as characters as much as anything else. The ideas encapsulated in the fiction are interesting, sometimes even compelling. There is only one really interesting character and Y.T. These detract from my pleasure in the novel. If you come to Snow Crash as an introduction to Stephenson, it will tell you if you will like his other books.
However, the Sumerian background mythos is so contrived that it requires endless expository dialogue. A visionary work which popularized the term "Avatar" and foresaw Google Earth. Also quite humorous (Mafia pizza franchises, the main character's name, etc). Huge swaths of the book therefore read like an essay. Worth finishing, but not starting: the characters and action were interesting enough to push me on to the end, but overall I recommend spending the time on another book entirely (try Daniel Suarez's The Daemon for a more modern and coherent work in the same genre).
I'm giving this 5 stars b/c it's everything I like in a well-written book but I doubt that Stephenson's style of writing is everyone's cup of tea. I found Snow Crash to be clever and thoroughly engaging. It doesn't hurt that I'm a tech geek either. Well done.
He pushed me to give it a chance because Stephenson is such a great writer so I picked up Snow Crash. On eof my favorite passages is how he describes, through Hiro, how everyman at one point or another thinks he could be a totally bada$$ mofo. This is the only Stephenson book I have read. His vision of a future America run by commercial entities (one of which is the Mafia) is so detailed that you will lose yourself in the setting and have moments where you think, "wow that's what it's gonna be like." It's obviuos to me that Stephenson was keeping himself out of the "cyberpunk" trend as the SciFi market was being flooded with books of this genre, but then decided he would show everyone up and come out and show that not only was he capable of writing in that genre but he could raise the bar for everyone else. It just feels cool, and you will feel cooler for having read it. I was not disappointed. His characters, especially Hiro and YT are bursting with personality.
I'm keeping this spoiler free but suffice it to say the showdown atthe end is very rewarding for the reader and will not leave you hanging. He was recommended to me by a friend even though I said I wasn't into SciFi. I have heard criticisms of Stephenson's other novels that his endings are weak, well that is not the casehere. This book is an amazing read start to finish. Stephenson never takes anything too seriously, I mean his protagonist is named "Hiro Protagonist," which keeps the tone fun. The book combines Asian influences with traditional SciFi and wraps it in this "cyberpunk" package that gives it an edgy feel. Pick it up now.
In the opening pages Stephenson introduces us to our hero protagonist (aptly named Hiro Protagonist) a sword wielding, computer hacking, pizza-delivery driver. It all becomes an overly complicated, unconvincing mess and momentum killer. Snow Crash captures your imagination right from the opening lines. The irreverent tone of the early chapters gives way to an unnecessarily detailed exploration of linguistic theory and Sumerian legends. For me, a promising start gave way to uneven pacing and an unconvincing and largely uninteresting premise. We soon learn that the Mafia is in the business of selling pizza, that Kouriers get around by `pooning cars from their planks', that people can `jack into the Metaverse', and that California is home to numerous City-states called Burbclaves. These links involve some serious stretches in thinking and some pretty thin theorizing as selective information is used to tie the evolution of human language and religion to a deadly metavirus.
The novel picks up speed again near the end and there is a bright spot late in the novel when a character who works for the Federal government is required to read (in 15.62 minutes) a multipage memo on `intra-office toilet-paper policies', but by then I'd pretty much lost interest. The first part of the novel is wildly imaginative, funny, edgy, and highly entertaining. While the early chapters brim with wildly preposterous ideas that have just enough truth to them to constitute great satire, the `Sumerian myth/linguistic theory/metavirus idea' is tedious and bogs the narrative down. There are no laws and corporations run everything.Unfortunately, after a great opening, the novel quickly loses its edge. Stories from the Old Testament are linked to Sumerian myths and then connected to computer viruses. I did enjoy this hilarious skewering of Government Bureaucracy but it wasn't enough to re-engage me in the story. Despite my enthusiastic reaction to the first part of the novel and that bright bit of satire near the end, I can only give this novel three stars.
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