Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

 I know: it's been a while since I blogged my last novel. And there's a reason for that, albeit slightly embarrassing... I neft the part finished novel in a guest house two hundred miles away, but the landlady kept it for me and even saved my page. Phew.

Anyway, I love a good novel of ideas, and this one throews ideas at you like few other novels. It's my first experience of Neil Stephenson, who I found to be devilishly clever in how he constructs his mindblowing conceits which include, among your usual post-William Gibson riffing on a Cyberpunk future, the concept of language itsewlf as a vrus, the same thing as both biological and computer viruses, with ideas themselves working as a kind of computer program.

You have to pay attention: the concepts are deliciously complex and ingenious, and we aren't spoon fed. The narrative is economical to the point that the novel seems to end rather abruptly, with part of me wishing for an epilogue but the greater of me appreciating the curt narrative structure.

While there's a certain line of absurdity that isn't crossed, the novel is dryly humorous and has a delightfully heretical view of religion as existing in relatiion to its viruses. It's a novel of ideas, not characters, but the book is chock full of entertaining grotesques and our heroes, YT and Hiro Protagonist(!) are nicely drawn.

It's worth awarning: there one icky scene where YT, aged fifteen, has sex with an older man. But, this aside, I enjoyed this very weird and very clever novel very much.