Oops, this book wasn’t in the must-read-all-unread-books-project but was lent to me by my younger brother who told me that it was worth reading. And he was right! Neal Stephenson is the same guy who wrote Cryptonomicon in 1996 but this book actually predates that by four years.
The story is set in a near distant future where the United States of America has collapsed, in fact all major governments seem to have collapsed. In their place has risen franchise societies with their own laws. One such organisation is the Mafia run by Uncle Enzo. Our main character starts of working as a pizza deliverer for the Mafia. A job where each pizzabox has a timer and if it arrives more than 30 minutes late your screwed. Our hero, the hacker/sword fighter/intelligence gatherer/music promoter Hiro Protagonist, nearly botches this job but manage to get help from a teenage Kourier[Sic!] who makes the delivery on time on her super advanced technological skateboard thingy. From here on we get to follow these two characters through as they “save the world”.
The book has a mixture of inconsistencys mixed with new thoughts and ideas as well as very ancient thoughts, ideas and myths. One inconsistency is how extremly fast the world must have gone to hell since our young hero still remembers our current world as it was in the nineties. At the same time as the world fell apart some radical new inventions were created and massproduced. Alongside with this collapse a virtual world, the Metaverse, was created, which is similar to Second Life but supposedly way cooler. In fact I wonder if not Linden Labs read this book before creating Second Life. Add to this ancient sumerian legends and the “real” events surrounding the Tower of Babel. Neal Stephenson manages to mix it all in and keep me riveted until the anticlimactical ending. I guess it’s his style of leaving the “happily ever after” part to the readers imagination because he did the same thing to me in Cryptonomicon. The bastard! 
Oooh, I really loved this book, and not only because it contains the best kendo quote ever
Posted by Hannes on May 16th, 2007