Kyle’s Reviews > Snow Crash > Status Update
Kyle
is on page 70 of 559
For a novel so admired by techies, I really hope it gets better fast. With all the mixed metaphors recycling hard-boiled noir, ridiculous over-explanations of obvious things (yes Neal, most readers can factor powers of two without you reminding them) and a nasty habit of coining crappy neologisms like “bimbo box” and “MetaCop,” it will take forever to get to the end of what reads like an ninth-grade story assignment.
— Apr 21, 2019 10:52AM
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Kyle’s Previous Updates
Kyle
is on page 480 of 559
It should be no surprise by now that this stereotype-filled story devolves into ‘the greatest generation’ nonsense by having characters make claims about how badass they were during global conflicts the United States haphazardly stumbled into, as if veterans of WWII and Vietnam were expected to make it this far into a silly novel about skateboarding couriers, samurai hackers and that damned Rat Thing deus ex machina.
— Jun 16, 2019 08:37AM
Kyle
is on page 460 of 559
Looks like my wish came true, in the most drawn-out way possible, for the Goodreads page count says the book is almost over, yet my edition I still have seventy pages to go. What a slog those will be! Can I change my wish, this late in the game, to bring back the silly Guard Unit #A-367 if the remaining chapters do not include a Filipino boy named Tranny? Oh, and make Raven's dentata-harpooning his everlasting sleep.
— Jun 03, 2019 08:09PM
Kyle
is on page 420 of 559
I could make some sort of witticism about the story going out to sea but reading has become tiresome and I just want it to end. Not going to happen anytime soon, as it seems like Stephenson is working up to a big twist when everyone arrives at the Raft, something inevitable like Y.T.’s mom being Juanita except five years later than Hiro’s present. Or earlier. Or who cares at this point. The Metaverse’s in dead water.
— May 22, 2019 05:27PM
Kyle
is on page 350 of 559
“He that is giddy thinks the world turns round,” or in this case a hacker only sees in code, even when Hiro’s Librarian cannot get the analogy, Ancient Sumerian is simply ones and zeroes. Y.T. has her own quest to go on (really doing the footwork for Hiro and now the Mob), which would be an easier pill to swallow if she wasn’t such a jerk to her hitherto unnamed mom, already burdened with a stereotypical satiric job.
— May 16, 2019 03:55PM
Kyle
is on page 280 of 559
Remember back when Snow Crash was a cyberpunk tale set on a very Gibsonesque Street inside virtual reality? That’s almost all out the window as this setting is merely a backdrop for an interactive PowerPoint presentation on Sumerian prehistory and a virus-like addiction to monotheistic religion while the big baddies prepare a babbling zombie army. It suddenly becomes a very Celestine Prophecy story.
— May 09, 2019 10:14AM
Kyle
is on page 210 of 559
It appears that Stephenson was an uncredited screenwriter for 2004’s Academy Award-winning ode to racial profiling, Crash. Hardly a stereotypical stone is left unturned: Italian-American mafia with a pizza empire, South American drug lords, Asians either all-business or just bizarre; no surprise what role the Arab in the taxi will play. Take away the fanciful tech and this tale is just how the West was done.
— May 04, 2019 10:59PM
Kyle
is on page 140 of 559
Frustrating to have a decent amount of speculative fiction focused on Juanita’s face-mapping and prescient knowledge of an infocalypse, only to be followed by nonsense chapters including a virtual swordfight and the inner thoughts of Rat Thing I’m probably not (hopefully) going to read about in later chapters. When the story gets back to what seems like the plotline, it’s literally a moustache-twirling industrialist.
— Apr 30, 2019 09:56AM
