PROS: Great concepts, fantastic sense of humour
CONS: Very long history lesson in the middle, poor character development, ending too tongue in cheek and not everything wrapped up.
VERDICT: Cons massively outweigh pros; I only finished this because I hate not finishing a book.
I wasn't a big fan of this at all. I thoroughly enjoyed it towards the beginning as the concepts were laid out - the Cosa Nostra Pizza Company, the Street and virtual sword fighting, pooning, the lot. But the characters just did not have the depth to keep me involved through that very long history lesson in the middle. While other characters were suitably likeable or dislikeable, YT was the only interesting character in the whole book. I found the ending alright, but more appropriate for a short story. After heaving myself through a lot of ancient history, I was hoping for something a bit less tongue in cheek. I never could work out whether Stephenson was taking the whole thing seriously or not - the concepts, the names, the ending and the gun-ho attitude of the characters to supposedly their impending doom, all suggest a very tongue in cheek approach, but the historical element was so very very serious. I found it a bit disconcerting. Number one criticism though - what happened to Raven's big nuke we were all worried about throughout the book? Unless I missed something it just stops being an issue?!
To be fair, I'm not a fan of Sumerian history, and it seems I might just not be a cyberpunk novel fan. I found Neuromancer a bit better, but roughly the same. But I don't want to write off a whole genre on the back of two novels - any recommendations? (Perhaps something fairly short, as my attention span doesn't seem as long with cyberpunk.)
