Rating: 
Summary: An imaginative book sure to entertain.
Review: Neal Stephenson has written an entertaining novel whose thought-provoking ideas are matched only by its eclectic cast of characters. Focusing on the idea of knowledge and the dissemination of knowledge through computer technology, the basic premise of Snow Crash is that of the protagonist (named Hiro Protagonist, no less) and his young partner, Y.T. (Yours Truly, which she wouldn't bother to tell you unless it was in the form of a sarcastic remark), thwarting an intended infocalypse with a little help from the Mafia and some other unusual allies. Along the way, the reader is given a good look at a future that may not be so far away: one dominated by computer technology and paralleled by a virtual reality that might question exactly what constitutes reality, and private franchises which rule in the place of governments. Stephenson has a flair for vivid description of a world just strange enough to be innovative and intriguing, yet familiar enough that we can see its basis very firmly rooted in our own. Despite the outlandish nature of both Snow Crash's characters and setting, basic principles are the same: there is the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak, those who survive and those who do not; the difference between the two is that of information.However, despite all these assets, Snow Crash is little more than light entertainment. The lofty ideas which Stephenson explores in his book seem to be beyond his firm comprehension, and discussions of Babel, Sumerian myth and other archaeological finds are dry and arcane, detracting from an otherwise vibrant and fast-paced plot. Almost all relevant information about the technical aspects of Snow Crash is revealed in the form of cryptic dialogue between Hiro and a computer-generated librarian, discussions that sound more like encyclopedia recitations than believable (or understandable) dialogue. I found myself glossing over these portions of the book without any real effect on my understanding of the plot; in the end it still comes out to the same thing: the bad guys have a dangerous weapon, and the good guys have to stop them. The details about Sumer and the fall of man are interesting, but not portrayed in a form that lends itself to any quick grasp of ideas that can be retained after the book is done. However, for those willing to take the time to read and reread a fourth time, Stephenson poses some interesting ideas to ponder. The characters in Snow Crash never leave the reader a moment to rest from the excitement they provide. Outrageous events happen one after another, and the calm manner in which they face everything from kidnapping and murder to the possibility of destruction of society and the world as they know it provides a great deal of amusement and curiosity about what they might do next. However, despite a plot that hurtles itself ever forward and drags the reader along, forced to either keep up or drop along the way, I found the ending both disappointing and deflating. Hiro and Y.T. save the world, of course, but then Hiro just drops out of the story altogether and Y.T. appears to transform from a rebellious and wild Kourier into mommy's little girl for little other reason than to provide some kind of ending. I would have liked at least for some kind of epilogue, if not a totally different ending altogether. In reading the last few pages, it seemed that Stephenson rushes to tie up all the loose ends of the story in any way possible - any way possible often equating to dull, bland, and unsuitable when compared to other parts of the book. After such a well-written novel containing such interesting characters and a world whose details must be read to be believed, I was hugely disappointed by the conclusion to say the least. However, Stephenson does tell an interesting tale and has great potential; his best work is yet to come.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable read
Review: This is my first foray into the cyberpunk genre, and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it. It takes place in the no-so-distant future, where everything in California has become privatized. Hiro, a self-proclaimed freelance hacker, is delivering pizzas for the mafia when he finds out about a computer virus, Snow Crash, that not only crashes the computer, but hackers' brains as well. The rest of the story is Hiro, his ex-girlfriend, and sidekick Y.T. trying to figure out what is going on and how they can stop it. The book hits the ground running and never lets up. Stephenson has an interesting take on religion and has done some solid research on Sumer and its gods and goddesses. I enjoyed the Metaverse and see definite parallels with today's 'Net, although the virtual reality part of the Metaverse has never caught on in real life. The ending was a bit of a disappointment for me-it seemed like he just realized he had 5 pages to finish the book and kind of threw it all together. Overall, though, I thought it was a great read and recommend it to all.
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable light reading; just don't take it seriously
Review: This is a very imaginative book, full of details about a highly digital future Earth, complete with an Internet-based simulated world called the Metaverse. A mysterious menace by the name of "Snow Crash" is unleashed upon the Earth and the Metaverse. It seemingly turns people into stupid herd creatures that speak in tongues. It can also make smart hackers totally lose their minds and turn into vegetables. Our hero and heroine set out to fight this evil not really knowing what it is: is it a computer virus, a disease, or a drug? How are an unbelievably macho thug, the President of the United States, and the world's greatest monopolist connected to "Snow Crash"? And why are some 4000-year-old clay tablets from Sumer the key to the whole mystery? The book is set up really well. The initial premises make a lot of sense, unlike a certain other famous cyberpunk book. This initial phase lasts for about 100 of the 470 pages. The rest of the book is full of either uninspired Hollywood-esque action (chases and violence) or else outrageous conjectures about Sumerian mythology and their connection to the Three Great Religions (excuse me, Mr Stephenson, ever heard of a part of the world that lay to the east of Sumer?). Stephenson clearly took pains to research his material. I know this, having read one of his sources about Sumerian civilisation. But all research is useless if you are going to use it for PSEUDOINTELLECTUALISM and alas, that is exactly what you get from this book. Eventually, this religion/mythology thing gets so irritating that one is glad to return to the straightforward fights and flights. Our hero and heroine eventually save the day and kill the badguys, so all ends well. (Or does it? There's that unfinished business with the nuclear bomb.)
Rating:
Summary: Best cyberpunk book I've read
Review: Snow Crash is by far the best book I have read in the Cyberpunk genre. The story flow is excellent, there are very few dull parts, the character descriptions and settings are reasonable, and the character development flows to the point they seem truly human.
Neal Stephenson truly knows how to write a convincing story, and I must say the plot was well-wrapped and not too blatantly obvious. Compared to other books I have read in the same genre, this is the most plausible plot and the best developed characters. No post-nuclear holocaust here, just an extremely advanced form of Republicanism. The characters are described and seen through enough to provide an edge of personality to temper the realism. There are no super-people here, no cyborgs, and no in-depth description of cyberspace (which is very much like what we have now-not the lethal playground of the advanced hackers depicted in so many other books).
There are a few downsides to this book, however. There is a very heavy correlation to ancient history dealing with religion that, for those many of us who are historically deficient mentally, is a bit overwhelming. Also, this isn't exactly a kiddie book, with many **ahem** colorfully described scenes and scenarios, as well as prolific profanity. For those of us used to modern society, though, this just adds to the flow and believability of the book.
All in all a good read, and on a 5 star system it would get a solid 4 from me. As an explanation for the lacking of the 5th star, I am not truly fond of the cyberpunk genre, being from the digital age. It seems so many of the books in this genre were written before I was born, and I have seen the partial realization of some of the points, and the total failure of others.
Rating: 
Summary: Buy this book
Review: Have your friends buy this book, then steal it and make them buy it again! Seriously. Stephenson is great at illuminating the world of the hacker. This book does so, but not the overly self-aware coolness associated with Cryptonomicon or Heavy Weather (by Bruce Sterling). It's fun, it's never serious - even when someone is trying to destroy the world - and it makes you turn the pages. I read a lot of science fiction, and am a rabid Gibson fan, and when I read this book, all I could say was 'cool'. The world, and the cyberworld. The arcane references to the Sumerians. Da5id. My personal favorite, Sushi K. And of course, Hiro Protagonist - freelance coder, swordmaster, information seller and pizza deliverydude. Remember, Americans do 4 things better than anyone else: music, movies, microcode and pizza delivery. And the position of baddest mother is taken. Piques your interest? You'll like Snow Crash. Think the attitude is childish? Pass this book up. Read Zodiac instead. Or Diamond Age.
Rating: 
Summary: Reminded me of eating at MacDonalds.
Review: A quick, cheap gorging but without much satisfaction. First for the good points that earned the book its two stars. The one thing that this book certainly didn't lack was imagination. The world which he has created is strange, bleak, and sarcastic -- and it's somewhat interesting, though not on any "deep" level. It is full of sometimes subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle critiques about the current (meaning 1992) world and the direction in which Stephenson thinks it's heading. There are plenty of reviews here which describe many of the critiques (franchises taking over the world, the absurb beaurocracy of the US government, etc), so I won't delve into them here. The book certainly had that cool techie factor that you'd expect from a cyberpunk novel. A virtual reality "Metaverse"; goggles allowing nightvision, infrared, millimeter-wave radar, ambient-sound processing. A fission-powered, gatling "rail-gun". There's no shortage of such examples, and they're certainly fun to read about; though they're typically not fully fleshed out or justified in the reader's mind. The tech factor isn't as sophisticated as I'd like (coming from a Computer Science background). There are a few utterly ridiculous examples of future technology (such as the Metaverse representation of Rife's information network as a bunch of big colorful blocks with connections between them), but all in all it's enough to keep the interest of the average techie if he's willing to set aside reality. Bad Parts. Put simply, this book just isn't well written. I'm admittedly no English guru, and I typically criticise a book more on its content than its structure, probably because I'm not familiar enough with good structure. But if someone like me can say that a book wasn't well written, that's probably bad. It completely lacked any sense of flow. It's almost as if he had this story in his head and just regurgitated it onto the page (like a movie script, as some reviewers have pointed out). The whole religious subtext was well researched, but then very sloppily (though imaginatively) laid out. I was particularly disappointed in the end when I expected many of these creative subelements of the story to come together and tie up, and they were just severed. This shouldn't throw you off from reading Neal Stephenson. I'm in the middle of reading his (much more recent) book "Cryptonomicon", and it seems the complete opposite of "Snow Crash". It's much more mature, much better thought out, and with less flash. Honestly that makes it a little boring. I'd love him to find a happy center between these two extremes, but until then I recommend William Gibson.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing!!!!!!!
Review: Did this book come before or after "The Matrix" I wonder?? It at least deserves to be made into a film as it is one of the best Sci-Fi books i've read! Stephenson writes brilliantly; the characters are very well developed and the plot is deep. It is a shame that the ending is rather abrupt, it seems as though Stephenson needed to avoid publisher deadline wrath!! Seriously, if you liked The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy and American Gods, then this is a book for you!!! Buy it NOW!!
Rating:
Summary: Best of the "Cyberpunk"
Review: Cyberpunk is a term that defies strong definition. Most people agree it is a subgenre of science fiction, that it has something to do with the relationship to man and his machines, and that it tends towards an idea-rich, "crammed" prose style. Bruce Sterling and William Gibson are the two other others most often associated with this field. Neal Stephenson, in Snow Crash, does the best of all. He proposes many futurist ideas without sacrificing the storytelling, and his characters are amongst the most memorable. If you were turned off to this genre due to the weak plotting and dense prose of Gibson, it's time to give it a second chance with this novel.
Rating:
Summary: Just can't get enough
Review: This has to be the most mentally uplifting, humorous, and yet deeply serious book I've ever read. Stephenson approaches the entire plot completely seriously, but the actually subject matter is a joke. It's rather hard to explain, especially since the book somehow takes things that make no sense and makes them work. The main character (for example) is a half-black, half-Korean pizza delivery salesman, who is also one of the few freelance hackers left in the world, he has a huge amount of influence in the metaverse, he's excellent at driving, he is a master at using a Katana, his room-mate is an ultra-famous rockstar, oh and did I mention that the Mafia runs his pizza company? The entire book is like this, and at certain points, the normal things make you laugh because everything seems so surreal. Yet it deals with the issue of memes (units of cultural information, in the same way a gene is a unit of genetic information), Sumerian Myths, and what happens when America goes Anarcho-Capitalist, not to mention skateboarders. It's a mix of things that should not ever go together. My only real gripe was one of the love scenes, infact, it was the only love scene, has a situation that I found slightly disturbing, only lessened by the fact it was a book.
Rating:
Summary: Deep
Review: For many years people have been telling me to read this book. Many people told me it was the best book in the cyberpunk genre ever written. So I dove in and I was surprised how this is not really a cyberpunk book at all.
It is a deep book but very scattered. One gets the feeling that the whole of the story is not as important as the tiny vignettes of the story. In other books this can work but the structure of this book feels a little scattered. Many times I found myself wondering when the story would advance again and not sidetrack. It does pay off in the end when all is said and done. I do not think this is the best cyberpunk book ever written as Necromancer is far beyond it in many ways. What Gibson has that Stevenson does not is a love of English and it's fluidity. As in all cyberpunk books what we miss is any sort of character depth. All players are very much like avatars. One is the hero, one is the skater girl with no growth or depth to any of them. At the end, they are the same as when the started. This could be a commentary of all books in the cyberpunk genre but it could also be a commentary of all Sci-fi books as it deals with ideas and not people. It is a good book with some fun ideas but it's not some great tome or anything.
I noticed some people were offended buy the religion in the book but I think this is a case of not being able to see the trees thru the forest. The religion is a story point, nothing more. There is no message in the end. Or they may be one and my brain is just immune to it.
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