Rating: 
Summary: Characters are great, sumerian story is okay...
Review: I really enjoyed the characters, but I was bored with the explanations and there wasn't a very climactic ending. The descriptions lost me after awhile because they were boring and not descriptive. I should have read this book before I read Neuromancer--which was much better. Still a good quick read.
Rating:
Summary: Pitt Bradford review
Review: I really did not like this book very mcuh, but I can see why it would be popular and why some readers love it (most of them that probably read it) and others hate it. Basicaly the book is very futuristic or at least a vision of the future. The main character of the story is Hiro Protagonist, who delivers pizzas for Uncle Enzo's Cosa Nostra and is a computer hacker in his spare time. He's basically your looser pizza boy who spends time hacking and skateboarding. The story is set in LA and the Unisted States is run by the mafia and pwople are being affected by some new drug called snow crash, where the story gets it's name. Basically snow drug is a computer virus, but not only does it wreck hackers' minds, but they basically can't do hacking because they don't think straight and they talk in gibberish. Anyway Hiro's best friend and mentor comes down with the virus and Hiro's off to save and protect the world from the mafia. I simply don't like this kind of writing and story. The writing to me seems to be very unfocused and therefore isn't very good. Stephenson does write some incredible stuff in this book, but it's not consistent. It's almost like he put a lot of time and effort into writing certain aspects of the story, but not everything. The beginning I thought was strong and I enjoyed it, but after a 100 pages I was gone and I really didn't enjoy very much after that point. The story may have been fresh in '92, but I've seen too many things that are similar for my taste. It really reminded me of japanamation. Usually when I read a book I have an image of the characters, bt the characters weren't real to me. I sat there reading the book and I saw a bunch of cartoons running around. It was just annoying because I knew the characters weren't real. I basically thought the story was a long script for a japanamation movie. On the positive side, there are a lot of people out there that like this kind of stuff, and although I don't and don't know about it I think people that are into science fiction and japanimation would really enjoy this story. I haven't seen a whole, but have seen enough to know what it's about and I think this has the same kind of jist. In closing I'm sure most people that have read this book enjoyed it because fans of this genre of books like stuff like this, it seems to have a lot of common elements of stories that are similar, if fact the date of the book indicates to me that it may have somewhat have been innovative. Someone like me who just doesn't enjoy works like this and it doesn't do anything for us should stay away. I would suggest the story to someone into science fiction, but not someone like me.
Rating:
Summary: A Journey at Hyper-Speed into the Future
Review: What most people consider the talent of Stephenson's Snow Crash is the whip lashed pace of the cyber-punk fiction from beginning to end. However, the greatest feat achieved by the author is the wide range of literary tolls that lead us from joy to pain to disgust to desire. Combining this pace with tongue-in-cheek humor as well as staggering symbolism, Stephenson delivers a ticket to a most mesmerizing ride inot the last, great,unknown frontier known as "the future." For a virtual "rookie" to the sci-fi fantasy world, and a less than avid reader, Snow Crash provided a breath of fresh air from the monotony of required school reading. However, my cynicism leads me to be skeptical of a lowly pizza delivery boy, albeit a Samaurai master swordsman, saving the virtual future with the aid of his hacker girlfriend. The aggressive undertones of violence denoted by an occasional sword fight or two convey Stephenson's distaste for the world's shortcomings causing him to create a virtual realm which has been set up to compensate for these inequities. Despite this motive, the actual storyline and resolution of the plot in and of themselves make Snow Crash an entertaining thrill ride through dementia and ultimately into utopia.
Rating: 
Summary: This was a great read, I laughed I learned I liked this book
Review: I am usually a reader that avoids the hype and sticks to authors and books that I know will provide an entertaining read.After reading the Amazon synopsis and a few of the other reader reviews I decided to buy this book and another of the author's books, "The Diamond Age". Snow Crash was one of the best books I have read in a long time. It was very funny and written with a very entertaining flow with lots of wit and energy. Now in the year 2000 some of the ideas he wrote about don't seem so far away but even now the book loses nothing of its edge and is still a great story. I loved both of the characters but Y.T was a rip! She was a great character and I would love to see a continuation of her character's story in another book. Thank you very much Neal for this story and I am very much looking forward to reading The Diamond Age. Write something else with Y.T. I am sure everyone else who reads this book will agree she truly makes the story. Hiro is a great character too. It is nice to read a book where the characters actually do what the reader thinks they should do and doesn't have people doing totally stupid and unreasonable things just to keep the story going longer and longer to a drawn out ending. This book had totally believable characters and situations from start to finish. I can't wait to lend the book to a friend so I can talk to them about it. A truly great find.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not Gibson
Review: Snow Crash is an excellent book. The first chapter is terribly funny tongue in cheek humor that sets the scene for a slightly more humorous look at the cyberpunk world than is offered by most authors. But the book does not continue like this. It progresses onwards, garnering a plot in the process. It does not possess the darkness that makes true cyberpunk (William Gibson) so great. Not to say that the book is not worth reading, but keep your expectations low.
Rating: 
Summary: proceed with caution
Review: I really wish that I liked this book. It was obviously well reseached and entertaining in some parts. But I just completely lost interest after about 100 pages. It tried to get to serious, and for me, this ruined the book. I can see why some people would love this book, but it is not for everyone. I hate books that take themselves to seriously when they dont have to. This book should have been about 100 pages shorter by cutting out all the useless information that was in it. I liked the pace of the book but the things that were happening were boring.
Rating:
Summary: Mildly entertaining
Review: I really don't understand why so many people rate this book so highly. The book starts out with what I thought was a firmly tongue-in-cheek rendition of a cyberpunk world. World government has collapsed, resulting in each housing subdivision becoming a separate country. Everything is franchised, right down to police and jails. Freeways are privately owned and operated. And the main characters' names are Hiro Protagonist and Y.T. (Yours Truly). I snickered all the way through the first chapter. Then comes the well-researched but heavy-handed explanation of speaking in tongues and how these sounds may be the microcode of the human brain. Pages and pages of such explanation, very seriously discussed, clashing garishly with the whimsical setting of the book. At the end of the book, I still liked the setting and the characters. I just wished Stephenson could have found a whimsical story to go with them.
Rating: 
Summary: Snow Crash
Review: If you enjoy science fiction books, then knock yourself out, enjoy the book and move on with your life. I did not enjoy the book. I live a normal life and I do not find these types of books interesting. I only read it upon the recommendation of one of my friends-apparently we have different taste in literature. Other than being extremely confused with the book, I did find it helpful on those sleepless nights. If you like this kind of book, then I recommend it. If you do not like this type of book, move on in the reviews.
Rating:
Summary: Snow Crash Captivating and Enjoyable
Review: I found Snow Crash to be a captivating and very enjoyable cyberpunk fiction book. Despite its enjoyability, I did at times find it hard to follow the story to the end without repeating certain areas. Neal Stephenssen leaps into the near future by weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything imaginable together to bring us this thriller of the information age. I find that this story is rather complex, but Stephensen does a good job of keeping the action hot and the characters engaging. The main character, Hiro Protagonist, is a freelance programmer who comes upon a conspiracy that threatens hackers with a virus leaving them in a vegatative state. Hiro takes on the challenge of deciphering who is behind it and how to stop them. Joining him is a young skater who has gotten the attention of the Mafia King. I had fun reading this book. This is my first cyberpunk novel, leaving the others to try to compare to this. The scary thing about this story is its wild and eerie view of the future that may before long prove accurate if things continue at the speed they are now.
Rating:
Summary: Snow Crash Review
Review: I think that it is evident that Neal Stephenson put a lot of time into the creation and development of the plot. At first the book seemed to jump around and not have any pattern, but as I continued to read the book seemed to fall into place. Hiro Protagonist, who is the main character of the book, is a man of many trades; pizza-delivery man for the Mafia, greatest samurai sword fighter in the Metaverse, and last freelance hacker. Together with his girlfriend, Y.T., they set out to destroy the culprit of the computer death virus known as Raven. This death virus if not stopped could end America. For me, the novel seemed to drag at points, it was a hybrid of worlds. At times the book moved at a neck-breaking pace only to yield a subsequent chapter that crawled as if it were a tortoise. This created a schism in the plot and put me in a polar mode; "I love it, I hate it, I love it, I hate it." For this reason it was mediocre at best.
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