I remember Jeff Noon being hot shit in the 90s — if I remember correctly, there were a whole bunch of die-hard fans on rec.arts.sf.written? Hm.
In any case, I stumbled upon two of his books in the 90s at a different sales (Pollen and this one). And I think I started to read this, but then bounced and put it back on the shelf? (Or that’s what I think I remember, at least. The 90s is, like, decades ago.)
But since I’m reading a bunch of late 90s books I bought on sale now, apparently (I didn’t plan to; it just happened), I thought I’d give it a go. If it horrible, I can just ditch it, of course.
It’s not horrible. It seems pretty interesting? I kinda like the style it’s written in — it’s very 1993; just dump chaos at the reader, and then pull back after a bit.
But… after reading 40 pages of this, I find that I’m just not interested, really. I’m not quite sure why — there’s fun bits, like the Coronation Street ingested as hallucinatory drugs (I think), but I just can’t be bothered, really. I guess I just don’t find drug/fantasy stuff all that compelling? It’s me, it’s not the book.
And since I’m ditching this book, I’m ditching the next one, too. (Heh, I see that I bought Vurt on a sale in 1995, apparently, and then Pollen at a sale in 97, so I guess these didn’t sell well, but the bookstore did their best to push them…)
Pollen starts off pretty swell, though.
Wow, there’s four books in the series:
Vurt (1993) by Jeff Noon (buy new, buy used, 4.04 on Goodreads)
“Automated Alice” is only tangentially related really and reads much more straight than the first two.