Jason reviewed Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Review of 'Snow Crash' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I really wanted to love Snow Crash....
After learning what novels inspired Ready Player One, I wanted to explore other literature that was similar, in both non-fiction as well as fiction approach. I read a brief description of Snow Crash and was sold.
There are a lot of great things here. I really love the idea of the metaverse, how it is used, described, and implemented. Looking thru my 2020 glasses at an earlier idea of the future, it holds up great. I like this idea of the future and I enjoy the characters, however, that is where my problems start to begin. Hiro...he just does it all in the real world AND the metaverse. He never seems to fail and only just grows in power. What can't he do? YT shows so much promise, but is rather underutilized and is peppered as filler and almost damsel territory. The rest? …
I really wanted to love Snow Crash....
After learning what novels inspired Ready Player One, I wanted to explore other literature that was similar, in both non-fiction as well as fiction approach. I read a brief description of Snow Crash and was sold.
There are a lot of great things here. I really love the idea of the metaverse, how it is used, described, and implemented. Looking thru my 2020 glasses at an earlier idea of the future, it holds up great. I like this idea of the future and I enjoy the characters, however, that is where my problems start to begin. Hiro...he just does it all in the real world AND the metaverse. He never seems to fail and only just grows in power. What can't he do? YT shows so much promise, but is rather underutilized and is peppered as filler and almost damsel territory. The rest? Forgettable. Not enough depth is created to really make me care about any of the others. They are just temporary companions.
I won't get into the whole Sumerian and power of language... It goes deep and ultimately, I felt rather lost throughout these portions and the exposition was at times, daunting. There were times in the story as a whole were events seemed to take a time jump, that I at least didn't catch if was stated so or not, that just left me feeling like I skipped chapters somehow... I feel like I'm nitpicking but I can still overlook these faults and enjoy my time with Snow Crash.
Give me more metaverse, more character growth and flaws, and I'm all in. Maybe its time to head into some Shadowrun territory or even Technomancer?
