I had been meaning to read this book for a couple years, and finally got to it a few weeks ago. It's a young adult novel set in the not-so-distant future, in a world where everyone has a "feed" implanted in their brain that connects them directly to an internet-like web of information, entertainment, and advertising. It's like having Google Ads fed directly to your head--you look at a car flying by and suddenly you're hit with twelve pop-ups advertising twelve different cars, and if you want you can buy one from a credit account without moving a muscle.
What fascinated me most about this book was the language. Anderson has postulated a world where the current deformalization of English has continued to the point where not only the teenaged narrator talks, like, really dumbed-down, but even his dad talks, like, totally, like a teenager from the '90s. And everyone has a major f^&#in' potty mouth. The language is not a major point of the book, but it just makes so much sense and makes the sci-fi setting believable.
Some have said the book is heavy-handed in its anti-consumerism, but I really didn't think so. The message is obvious, but fits naturally into the story. My only complaint is that there's a point where the main character turns into a complete jerk and I'm still not sure exactly what motivated him to act that way, but the world around hm was interesting enough to me to allow that little bit to slip. Overall, a great book.
(out of five)
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