There was no motivation, no conflict, no struggle. The voice from behind the scenes told them to move and they moved. They asked themselves "where are we going?" but the answer eluded them until the end. Then they finally got there and the story ended. A bleak, pointless journey toward something vague. It reminded me of Kafka a little bit. But in Kafka's story the man at least tries to fight the ambiguous environment, he is in conflict with the world. Here the characters don't fight, they are just pawns of something bigger.
Along the way they encounter futuristic scenery, apply futuristic gadgets against other futuristic gadgets. Change location. Repeat.
The feeling of being a pawn resonated with my own existential dread and I wanted the characters to break their monotonous cart ride, to burst through the paper walls surrounding them so tightly. But they didn't. There were just occasional glimpses through cracks that showed a rich alien world that also feels kind of familiar. ( )

Undeniably a landmark. Gibson is really flexing his muscles, at times a bit too hard, but I love the bits of Burroughs sprinkled throughout.

The team isn't actually very good, is it? Molly gets her leg broken minutes into their first caper, Armitage is psychotic, Riviera is evil and is working at cross purposes with the team. Is Case actually good? Can we even know? I am questioning Wintermute's judgement. ( )

After hearing a lot about this novel I finally decided to give it a try - although some more contemporary Gibson's work I find very difficult to read and comprehend. I have to say that this one, although it is one of his first novels and is slightly weird to the point you are no longer sure if what characters are experiencing is real world or not, is very good read. It has a starting point and finale, characters you can relate to and very interesting story.

Author tries to simulate future sleng and invents a lot of phrases along the way. This might be off-putting and extremely confusing. Nevertheless give this one a try, it is interesting and very immersive read. I can understand why it is considered a corner stone book for cyberpunk SF.

Recommended for all SF aficionados (I am already looking for second and third part of trilogy :)) ( )

The worst science fiction book I have read so far. The prose is far too dense, with unfamiliar words and concepts, to even understand what may be happening.
Not recommended. ( )

I don't like this book, but I respect the hell out of it. Let me explain: on an objective level I admire how it fearlessly plunges you into a different world. I love how it uses the language of electronics to describe ordinary things to indicate how technology has absolutely saturated this setting. I love its prescience on the cultural consequences of the internet (I think it even predicted dubstep!) But it was a slog to read. The cyber-linguo was often so dense that it broke the suspension of disbelief. The characters were uninteresting at best, their motivations seemed contradictory and petty, many of their actions were baffling. Take Case: a bland cipher of a hacker whose only motivation is to get high on space-drugs or whatever, but nevertheless attracts every woman he meets. Eliminate Case and make kickass cyborg ninja Molly Millions the main character and suddenly things are twice as interesting. But no, sorry, she's a chick so the best she can be is the main squeeze. I guess the 80s was before people figured out that a boring male protagonist for the reader to project himself onto is sometimes a detriment to the plot.

It's possible that I'm being way too hard on this book. But I can't deny how frustrating it was get through, how every time you wanted another juicy turn of phrase or tidbit of creative futurology you had to conquer yet another tedious and nonsensical chase or action scene.
( )