Review: Neuromancer

Neuromancer by William Gibson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wish I'd read this book when I was fifteen. "This is even cooler than Fight Club," I'd have thought, and maybe I'd have gotten more into... I dunno, manga? Help me out here.

I appreciate the immense worldbuilding, and I appreciate the ingenuity of putting action in a digital space, and I appreciate the cryptic slang - there's a reward to figuring out what the hell everybody's talking about several chapters in (or not).

Our characters don't have a lot going on: there's the criminal mastermind, the sexy assassin, the Rastafarian techie guy, the innocent victim, and of course our drunken antihero. Or maybe I'm getting the attributes mixed up, but they all slotted in neatly. The plot is fast and thick, full of hardboiled twists and turns, and wades nicely through grey moral areas, where despite the thin cast I was genuinely interested in what choices they would make.

There's a lot going on, and the razzle dazzle future-speak is laid on so thick that I'm sure I missed a lot. I'm glad I read it; it's earned its laurels as a milestone of sci-fi (and not just because the Matrix ripped it off mightily); it's still a little too cool for its own good.

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