Neuromancer left me feeling rather disappointed.

I had expected the cyberspace and AI components to play a much larger part. I went into it thinking that it would be a cyberspace story with a dash of noirish crime caper, but it turned out to be the other way around. I would have liked to have gotten to know the titular 'character' a lot more.

The ending didn't offer much resolution. I suppose it's an ending that's true to each of the characters involved... Still, though, it wasn't satisfying.

While I can't fault Gibson for it, I found the evidence of Neuromancer's age distracting. This is a world with neural interfaces and orbital colonies, but a few megabytes of RAM have black market value and data is stored on tape. ( )

I read Gibson's Pattern Recognition first and, to be honest, I didn't really enjoy it too much. Knowing the fame of Neuromancer though, I had to give it a shot. I got to around 100 pages in and decided to put the book back on the shelf. The futuristic, cyberpunk setting was interesting, but I could get into the story. I had no desire to see any character do anything really. I didn't care of Case survived or if Molly had a happy ending. I feel that the purpose of the book was to describe an atmosphere, which I appreciated for 100 pages, but I just got bored with the story and the lack of information. The cut-up, hard to follow text wasn't so much the reason, but I'm sure it added to my frustration. I get that this style of writing adds to the atmosphere, and I appreciated that, but I kept hoping for something interesting to happen, and nothing did. I'm sorry I couldn't finish it, but with so many other books to read, I couldn't spend another day on this one. ( )

It just blows me away every time I read it. It's THE cyberpunk novel ;-) ( )

Neuromancer is one of those books you know you should love. I like cyberpunk. I appreciate classic science fiction. Every feature Neuromancer presents I can check off. It's the execution that is failing. Gibson isn't a good writer. His descriptions are unclear. His understanding of computer technology was outdated even when it was written. There are some memorable ideas, but everything here has been done better by those who came after. Neuromancer should be appreciated for creating cyberpunk, but it is not a quality novel. ( )

Summary on back of book:

"Case was the sharpest data thief in the Matrix, until an ex-employer crippled his nervous system. Now a new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run against an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a mirror-eyed girl street-samurai riding shotgun, he's ready for the silicon-quick, bleakly prophetic adventure that upped the ante on an entire genre of fiction."

I was required to read this book for a class and by and large, it was hardest slog of a read I've had to do for a class in a long, long time. I'm normally a big fan of science fiction and was excited when I found out I'd finally have a chance to read the book that created cyberpunk. But this one was hard. The prose jumped around so much between characters and scenes, and Case "flipped" in and out of reality and the Matrix that most of the time, I wasn't sure where I even was. There was the detachment that I've come to associate with postmodernism and while usually, I quite enjoy it and find it humorous, for me it didn't work here. The book didn't have that ironic feel I've received from other pomo works of fiction so instead of being ironic and funny, it was just boring.

Besides that, I have really no idea what happened at the end or what part Neuromancer really even played. I'm not sure why Wintermute was after Case and company. Indeterminacy can be effective, but this was too much for me.

Honestly, I can tell the book is actually very good, so me not liking it is probably more of a difference in personal taste than the book being bad. I'm going to hang on to my copy and in the future, when I'm much more acquainted with postmodernism and cyberpunk, I plan on rereading this. I think I'll get much more out of it then than I did this time around. ( )