The book is dated. It's setting is a brutal, dirty future of endless cities, ruled by faceless corporations. It was made before anything we would view as the internet existed. Instead there is Cyberspace. Rather than give a quick definition of it I'll let Gibson's description speak for itself:
Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts. … A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding. (Gibson 69.)
The technology of the Neuromancer doesn't quite match up with our modern world of smartphones and facebook. But the book transcends its lack of foresight. The Neuromancer paints such a vivid picture, such a complete little universe that I can honestly say I was never bothered by whether it was 'realistic' to our future or not.
The language in Neuromancer is compelling, and while the prose can tend to purple at times it all works to the purposes of evoking a strong sense of atmosphere. Atmosphere is a difficult thing to quantify in books but Neuromancer has it in spades. This is a cool book, and special in the way it makes the reader feel cool just by reading it.
All this and I haven't really touched on the plot and characters. The book is centered around Case, a desperate drug addict and ex-hotshot hacker. Case falls in with a shadowy little group being manipulated by person or persons unknown to do a 'run' (heist) on a powerful corporation. More information would spoil the plot. A standard heist plot but the trappings of it are very weird and once the heist begins the weirdness boils over, overwhelming the plot. The characters themselves are icionically cool but not what I would call three dimensional. Even Case, the main character, is at his essence a fairly simple character, despite his tragic background. The straight forwardness of the characters is in fact (without getting too spoilery) a plot point in the book though.
Neuromancer can be an uneven book. The plot doesn't quite flow as smoothly as I like. Rather it jutters and jukes, and occasionally sputters. The climactic run doesn't hold together very coherently although to expand on that sentiment would be to spoil things so I'll leave it be. I found it a satisfying read all the same. Like Dune, the ideas and setting of Neuromancer are more powerful than any quibbles about plot pace. I'll admit I'm a bit biased in this review- I like noir stories of all types but am particularly fond of cyberpunk. Crime fiction critics may not have as much love for this book as I do. I rate Neuromancer a 9 out of 10.
