Snow Crash

Where do I even begin here. It's really interesting that this book gets held up as a cornerstone of cyberpunk/modern SF. Perhaps it's one of those things where the book is important for what came after it, what trends it inspired in the genre, rather than important for the literal words between it's covers.

I suppose there are a few things that I did enjoy. Stephenson writes action and action scenes well. They tended to be fast-paced, properly descriptive, fun, and at times exciting. The other thing that I enjoyed was the inclusion of so much Sumerian myth and religion, something that I really had no prior understanding of. But this was a double edged sword for me, because if ancient mythology is one of the highlights of your work, you might as well just read a textbook. Especially because Stephenson doesn't really try all that hard to weave his info dumps into the story that he writes. It's like he takes full time-outs to dump info on the reader, before resuming the action in a jarring way.

I think the biggest critique I had was the less-than serious tone that dominated everything. It's hard to take anything seriously, even in moments that seem like they should be taken seriously, when the voice of the writer doesn't want to. On top of that, the humor itself didn't connect with me at all. And even if it did, its saturation within the text would make it overbearing and encumbering. Snow Crash ends up feeling deeply juvenile, like I should've read it when I was a freshmen in highschool.

There were several super horny sections that were oddly out of place and unnecessary, the ending felt rushed and truncated, the prose felt average at best but often was far below average, and I never grew attached to any of the characters whatsoever. Just not my kind of book at all. Honestly, I wanted to DNF about half-way through, and though it was a struggle to finish, I'm glad I did, for the sole purpose of feeling better about my opinion. It was a real bummer, because I really do believe that there is a good story somewhere in here. Which made it all the worse when I was left feeling indifferent about the conclusion, and moreover relived to be done with it all.

I have some other Stephenson works on my shelves that I haven't read yet, and I'm hoping for a better outcome.