Neuromancer

This is a book that is almost impossible to review.

It's full of imagination and good concepts, which is evident by how influential it has been, but there's just something about this book that didn't fully click for me. The narrative jumps back-and-forth between characters through the lead character jumping heads, so-to-speak. There are a lot of “tech” concepts in the book that Gibson sort of just made up.

I remember reading in an interview that he had zero understanding of the tech involved (because this was before commercial internet, some of this stuff still existed, though) and decided to wing it. Like most good science fiction, though, he was able to project what he thought humans in the future would create and... he wasn't entirely wrong, was he? My biggest holdup is that the lead character, Case, doesn't really have much going for him. Because you're jumping between himself, a construct of himself and Molly's consciousness, the reader ends up only getting to know most of the characters on the surface level.

While Case may have some connection with Linda, it's hard to visualize it since we see so little of it and get only a broad sense of how Case feels about her. He seems more engrossed in the mysterious Molly.

Essentially, this novel gets caught up in the concepts, imagery and how cool it is while making some sacrifices when it comes to narrative clarity and creating fleshed out characters.