I knew it would happen sooner or later - an author I love released an ebook exclusive, so I finally bought one, rather than sticking to free classics. And it's appropriate that it should be Noon, who's always been fascinated by the idea of media blurring into one another, and into humanity. As here, where a young woman ends up with TV skin. The problem is, it's Noon's first book in a decade, and yet he doesn't really seem to have moved on in that time. Or if he has, it's not far enough - a tragi...

Jeff Noon's first novel in almost a decade isn't really a book at all, at least not in the traditional sense. He's trying to do something with prose - and it remains prose, even though the style often appears to cross over into poetry - that has more in common with video than text. We've seen a similar style in bits of his earlier works and some of the short stories, and he uses it a lot on twitter in his 150 character "spores" - I am certain it is twitter that has spawned this book.Stylisticall...

It's been a long wait since the last Noon novel. This is a short, sad story of a starlet quite literally consumed by the media. In particular, it is a meditation on the omnipresent influence of television. The main issue I have with the book is that its subject matter feels strangely out of step with the times. In places it feels like scifi that would have been fashionable 10-15 years ago... Noon's wonderfully lyrical prose and nightmarish imagery saves the book though, he certainly remains a un...

When Vurt came out in 1993, I thought Jeff Noon was the best thing that ever happened to SF. His novel was like an acid trip of an impossible future of headache-inducing colors and greased up pixels. Reading Channel SK1N twenty years later, I wonder if Mr. Noon's future has simply become the echo of an impossible past.There is still much of the madness and deft prose of Noon's previous works in this book, his first since Falling Out of Cars, ten years ago. But much of the color has been washed a...

I don't know, maybe I have to read it again, but it didn't quite capture my interest as much as the previous books.

There's weird, there's bat-shit crazy, then there"s Jeff Noon, In a near future England obsessed with popularity and the media we follow a young starlet as she starts to broadcast media signals on her own skin. throw in a sub-plot about a reality TV show that has achieved the status of a religious cult, where people watch a contender slowly go mental living in an empty, transparent dome. All delivered in Noon's trademark surreal style.

I am a fan of Jeff Noon's writing style. I love the way the story and the words become nearly lyrical. This was enough to satisfy me. But. I did want just a tad more more, I wanted more ideas, more weirdness. It was strangely grounded compared to his other stuff (or at least how I remembered them). The characters were also a bit empty. Stuff happened _to_ them. But that wasn't so much a problem for me.

A techno fever dream

I have been reading this between the graphic novels I dove into, and while it took me a while to finish, I have to say this was one of the best books I read this year. It wasn’t perfect, but it is still five stars good.I’ll start with the tiny bit of negative. I felt like this book wrapped up a bit oddly. I felt like it never really had a clear resolution. But then I also look back after reading and realize I don’t know what the plot trajectory was either. The protagonist finds she has this new

This was just not good. Made worse, actually, by the couple seeds of really interesting ideas that were in it, but they definitely seemed to rot and die in the ground - probably because of over-watering with weird stream of consciousness sentence fragments and pretty much unreadable pseudo-cyber poetry nonsense. I really liked Noon's earlier stuff, and had thought his last book (the last couple maybe) was a solid step in the direction of books that one can actually read and enjoy. Not the case h...

So glad he's back, noon's ideas are so imaginative they will touch everything you see evermore. I read this really quickly and have read a lot since but the imagery and idea of this are so original and meaningful and relevant they cut through everything else. Not a huge fan of the poetry moments as sometimes they communicate little to me and fill in where action or plot would sit in a traditional book.

Starting off feeling like a modern retelling of classic anime Perfect Blue, this novel quickly incorporates the familiar themes, wordplay and experiments that make it undeniably a Jeff Noon novel. I can't think of any other writer this good at conveying a feeling of synesthesia. He managed to blend music and writing in Needle in the Groove with hypnotic results. I felt this novel attempts to do the same with writing and visual communication, both on tv and online. He sometimes misses the mark, b...

The book is swathed in genius, wonderful linguistic and imagistic set-pieces, yet doesn't quite hold together in a satisfying whole. Its world is a media saturated one, where pop singing sensations are created by George Gold, a Simon Cowell figure, but have a very limited shelf-life and live hopelessly isolated lives to protect them from the public's insatiable demand to paw at them. But Gold himself has lost his flesh and blood daughter to the most popular reality show of the day, "The Pleasure...

It's great to be reading a Jeff Noon novel again, ten years after his last. His style is as unique as ever; lost in the margins between prose and poetry, writing and music, cyberpunk and fantasy, and clearly having great fun throughout. But Channel SK1N is not the rollicking adventure that Vurt, Pollen or Nymphomation were - it's much more of a mood piece, like Falling Out of Cars. I finished that book feeling a little let down, and the same is true here, but maybe I need to reset my expectation...

This one doesn't quite work for me. I found it repetitive, but, admittedly, you have to have read the thing that is being repeated, so I do see how some people might have liked it more than me.Despite being described as 'Frankenstein for the X-Factor Generation' it is very reminiscent of older films and books that express fear of or serious doubts pertaining to mass media, celebrities, and the such. Nothing we didn't have in Cronenberg's movies (Videodrome!), William Gibson's fiction (Idoru, Mon...

This book is exactly what I expect from Jeff Noon - dizzying at times, a fast ride through a slow revelation. If you've ever read anything by him, you will be very comfortable with his wordplay, and sometimes rambling explorations of a concept. He writes scathingly about our media and image obsession, and I absolutely love the pure creativity of his premise.I recommend this book, highly. It was worth the wait.

Oh how I've missed you Mr. Noon. This is the first novel of his since 'Falling Out of Cars' which I loved and this one did not disappoint. A clever mix of sci-fi, social observation, meta-narrative and a flat out great story. Interesting only published as an ebook. A story about the fickle nature of celebrity, and the public's voracious appetite for it, and sadly believable model of constant consumption of entertainment news / gossip and reality entertainment. For fans of clever, intelligent sci...

I recommend listening to Joy Division while reading this book. The dissonance and urban feel help to connect with the ideas. Really good book. I noticed that I was rattling through the book. It sweeps along, caustically expanding on current aspects of modern life. He's been away from a while and it is pleasing to see Jeff Noon putting some new stuff out. It's encouraged me to go back to the previous books which I read in the dim and distant past

I count Noon amongst my favourite authors, but I didn't enjoy this one at all. The writing style is reminiscent of 2000's Needle In The Groove, with traditional prose regularly breaking down into poetry or just a jumble of un-punctuated words, but whereas in the former case it felt appropriate and conductive to the tale being told, here it feels forced and uneasy.The story is both brief and bleak, the targets of the manufactured pop industry and reality TV feel too easy - this is a book that fee...

I first encountered Jeff Noon’s works through a reading from his second novel Pollen he did in a Camden Town bookstore while I was on vacation in London. I wasn’t really reading any Science Fiction anymore at this time, but I was looking for something to do that evening when I saw the announcement and his novels seemed very well written, so I decided I might as well give it a try. And I am very glad that I did, not only because I walked away with a signed copy of Pollen from that reading but als...