Science Fiction

I’m going to stray from the herd here and just say ‘stop’. It’s not a good book. It is foundational to cyber punk and we wouldn’t have movies like the matrix without it, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. I’ll also give it a lot of credit for being a very well imagined future with some great settings. But the main character is unrelatable, and the supporting characters are shallow. I’ll give it a pass for being a product of its time and not call out the racism and misogyny. But it commits the worst sin of a story in that you just don’t give a shit what happens to the characters. If halfway through the story a bomb went off and the story went on with a whole new cast, you’ll be ok with that. With no connection to the characters you have no investment in the victory or concern about their defeat, so the plot just kind of happens and you feel pretty ‘meh’ about it.