Took a bit longer, but I finally made it though last months book, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson 1992 559 pgs No Spoilers

Snow Crash starts with a fantastic setting and plot direction. A futuristic, semi post apocolyptic, mafia pizza delivery guy named Hiro Protagonist, (who just happens to be a part time semi pro hacker/metaverse champion) gets unwittingly pulled into a murderous plot of computer viruses and ancient religions. Along the way teaming up with along with skateboarding side kick and other VR (virtual reality) partners to stop a plan of revenge.

Wow! thats some crazy $#it right there! But sadly, the set up is about as good as this book ever gets.

It does start out great. The writer, Neal Stevenson, has great descriptive focus, in a laid back kind of way that uses humor and various geeky call backs that are on point at every turn

The almost non stop action scenes are just as vividly crazy, hell a few times I thought I may get whiplash.

But all of that good set up and building list of characters, just does not pan out. And it doesnt take long to fall off the virtual wall.

Well it did actually take me longer to get through this because there SO MUCH going on here, and there, and over there, with that character taking the lead then this one…

The plot just kept expanding in every direction. All the VR mixing with IRL of Hiro and his partner YT seemed to just get away from the author and he was unable to reign it in and keep everything pointed in the right direction.

Multiple times I needed to go back chapters and chapters at a time to figure just what the flips just went down.
There is some great narrative, excitement, action, drama front to back. But it rarely connects or clicks with the next or previous part.

I remember being 3/4 of the way through. Stopping and thinking to myself.. I have no Idea whats going on or why. Each chapter seemed to be just a slice of something else happening in another place. Never getting the entire picture.

The whole thing was akin to the Matrix with being in the metaverse and VR and future tech, but even there things got a bit too corney. I even had an actual “oh c’mon” moment there at the end.

Going back to where I thought the story just got away,, I wonder if this would have been broken into a trilogy it might have helped to keep the action, and the reader on the right path. Misdirection is fine. No direction is something else.

For a good 30minutes, I thought this was going to be an awesome book. But it just couldn’t contain all that was happening all at once.
I will say that for coming out in 1992, there were some good ideas and use of the Metaverse and VR.
I know it never happens, but I would love to see this redone. Tightened up. Maybe do that trilogy. Flow things together. It does have great moments. But.. it’s pretty rough going right now.