Snow Crash Book Review (2024)

Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash is a science fiction cyberpunk novel by American author Neal Stephenson and in it, he tells a story about technology, computers, and a world that is in danger from the threats they present. If you want to find out more about this story, then make sure to read what this Snow Crash book review has to offer.

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Snow Crash Book

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Economic Crash

The cyberpunk story starts in Los Angeles and the events take place in the 21st century, it’s not a futuristic world of any kind, but the technology described in the story is still fascinating and well thought out.

The author talks about certain events that take place a few years after a horrible economic crash that has affected the entire world. Los Angeles is also not a part of the United States anymore for reasons you will find fascinating and learn about in the book itself.

Hiro Protagonist

Another interesting thing about this world is that it is divided into separate territories that each have their separate business franchises running them. After this brief introduction, it’s time to find out about the main character who you will be reading about mostly in the novel from our Snow Crash book review.

His name is Hiro Protagonist and he works as a pizza delivery man for the Mafia. He also has another skill that is far more fascinating than delivering pizzas, he is a skilled hacker and this ability leads him to meet a character called Y.T. which stands for Yours Truly.

She is the second character who gets pretty involved in the story and you get to see a lot of Y.T. She and Hiro team up and work together to steal information from various places and make money by selling it to the CIC, a for-profit organization that emerged from the CIA.

The Snow Crash Virus

The story gets way more exciting when Hiro discovers a file called Snow Crash on one of his gigs. This file contains data for a dangerous narcotic as the man who offers it to Hiro, called Rave, says so but that later proves otherwise.

The story from there gets very technical about what happens with the computers and the technology described within, you get to meet more hacker friends of Hiro’s and other characters who prove very sketchy in this line of business.

Brain Damage

After Hiro’s hacker friend Da5id analyzes this file, the contents inside cause his computer to crash and Da5id actually suffers brain damage in the real world, that’s something you don’t see every day and it’s also not anything good.

Juanita Marquez is Hiro’s ex-girlfriend and he asks for her help with this form of computer virus as she shows him a large collection of data, some of which have connections to it, she warns him about this thing and disappears.

Powerful Virus

This virus is actually the main concern of everyone who you get to meet in this book, it’s a very powerful thing that has the ability to badly damage the brain of anyone who tries to hack or meddle with it. A nice bonus for all of the science lovers out there is also the fact that the author has taken the time to explain how this tech actually works.

Of course, it is fictional but it does make a lot of sense and it’s pretty cool that the author has done this. Small details are always a plus when it comes to science fiction stories. We won’t spoil the explanation and how it came to be in this book review of Snow Crash, but you can take your time finding out for yourself.

The True Dangers of the Virus

You will also be seeing Raven again, the character who handed out the data file contains the Snow Crash virus in the first place. Hiro later finds out that this character has a very well thought out reason for wanting to destroy America and this virus was the key to doing so.

Most of the action and fights that you will be reading in the book take place in the Metaverse, a world of technology and coding and hacking in which there is no blood but people die all the time and a lot is always at stake.

Dangerous New World

Before Snow Crash appeared, you couldn’t really die in the Metaverse, people logged on and witnessed the powerful and magnificent world of virtual reality. Laws are bent there and if you are an experienced hacker like Hiro, you can have quite a lot of fun in there. But then, Snow Crash made this world so much more dangerous and anyone who died in there, would be permanently dead in the real world as well or suffer a huge amount of damage to their mind.

One of the Best

This concept is quite silly, to be honest, but the way that Neil Stephenson writes it he actually makes you believe how this is possible as this author knows what he is talking about. There is a ton of action in there, a lot of science and technology talk which for the greatest of science fiction fans will be the biggest attraction to the book.

Don’t Miss This One

We won’t spoil the ending of this novel in our Snow Crash book review, but you can be sure that is a fascinating one and it will leave you wanting more of this story and the world in which these unique characters live in. You wouldn’t want to miss this one if you are a science fiction enthusiast who only reads the best content.

Brilliant Story

The story is quite brilliant and often funny at times, the characters live in a dangerous world where there is always something exciting to do and ever since Raven came along, the thrill was at another level as the stakes were also way higher. That’s all you get from us and the rest is up to you to find out.

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