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personaje 5/5. bine construite, originale, ajungi să te atașezi de ele, chiar și de antagonist.
fundal 5/5 cyberpunk perfect, la fel de bun ca și Gibson.
stil 5/5 curat, adrenalinizat, fluent, tehnic fără să fie tehnicist, bine tradus.
poveste 4/5 excelentă ca acțiune, răsturnări de situații și toate cele, dar nițel cam lungită cu partea religioasă.
total: una dintre cele mai mișto cărți citite de mine; cea mai pasionantă (pt mine) de la Zei Americani încoace (deci de vreo 10 ani). Total recomandată cititorilor de cyberpunk, unde aș pune-o pe podium; evident, nerecomandată celorlalți, ca orice cyberpunk. ( )

A Book Set In The Future

As usual with my reviews of Science Fiction, I will admit that I don't particularly care for the genre, primarily due to the disparity between the interesting concepts most books contain and the quality of their writing. Snow Crash is no different.

From his vantage-point of 1992, Stephenson had a remarkable vision of the possibilities of computer-generated worlds. His version, the Metaverse, resembles a modern RPG in which users "goggle in" as avatars and perform various acts ranging from mundane (converse, ride public transportation) to superhuman/impossible (swing a katana while riding a motorcycle at tens of thousands of miles per hour, simultaneously conversing with the man you are trying to decapitate). His vision included a librarian with instant access to essentially all the world's knowledge (much of which pertains to ancient religions reimagined as viruses) and a computer virus, Snow Crash, which not only debilitates a user's avatar in the Metaverse but also the user in the real world.

Snow Crash is a long book which can be read quickly. Its original conception as a graphic novel is evident in its predilection for action rather than explanation. The main character, Hiro Protagonist (groan), changes from a pizza delivery boy working for the Mafia to a free-lance spy fighting to save the world from the reincarnation of the ancient Sumerian civilization. His fifteen-year-old sidekick, YT, is a courier riding an advanced longboard endowed with high-tech weaponry. Their cartoonish battle against the organization attempting to take over the world contrasts starkly with the esoteric religious details provided as background of the organization's rise to power.

While parts of Snow Crash kept me engaged, I eventually found myself speed-reading to get finished. ( )

Some bits were quite silly, but a decent book and kind of a classic. ( )

I was initially concerned about it being a techie sci-fi published in 1992, but turned out to be a pretty fun read. I highly recommend it to any of my programmer friends. ( )

There's not much I can say that hasn't already been said about this classic book, so I will just sum it up:

Brilliant, prescient, and thrilling but...not for the faint of heart. Some very brutal and graphic scenes. I loved it but at times I got a bit disturbed and had to take a breather. ( )