First let me say I REALLY wanted to like this book. Hell, there are several reasons why I didn't want to NOT like this book, not the least of which are:- It was recommended by a friend whose opinion I respect- I feel like I've hated on all the books I've read so far this year- It is highly rated among fellow Goodreaders (like all of the other books I've hated on lately)Seriously, that last one really gets me. I've never had such a bad streak of books. Wool, Southern Reach, Casual Vacancy, and no...

It's inevitable. If a reader (me in this case) has read 41 books by the end of October, invariably one will count as the dumbest. And so with two months of reading left in this year, I have my nomination for that illustrious designation. [It was in the house ; I was tempted ; don't shame me]

Birds of a feather flock together:A blue feather had landed on the stomach of the Thing-from-Outer-Space. One of his tentacles reached out for it His spiky fingers took a hold, and a hole opened up in his flesh, a greasy orifice. He turned the feather in his feelers and then stroked it in, direct, to the hole. He started to change. I wasn’t sure which feather he’d loaded, but from the way he was moving his feelers I guess he was swimming with the Thermo Fish.So to be knocked down with a feather

Can't stop thinking about those yellow feathers...

I was given this book when it first came out in the early 90's and was completely blown away. I re-read the book last year and it still is as enjoyable as it was 15 years ago. Noon takes the reader through the drug riddled streets of future London. Everyone is addicted to feathers. You tickle your tongue with a feather and depending on the color of the feather you go on a certain trip. If you like to eat aliens, if you worship the game cat, if you think people should mate and have offspring with...

Bizarre and bracing.Shared virtual realities induced by partially ingesting colored feathers?! So strange, and strangely compelling (and in parts repulsive). This has got some of the feel of A Clockwork Orange, with some Gibson-esqe cyberpunk vibes where, if you're not careful, you may lose yourself like Alice down the rabbit hole.Fun, yet jarring and exhausting, with a disjointed narrative lucid one moment and untethered the next.

Vurt - novel as unending hallucinatory, wild, intense fever dream. Full Disclosure: I'm relishing every page. How did Noon do it? In an interview, the British author recounts pouring fifteen years of personal frustration into his writing the novel, letting the burning and channeling just happen. Noon also cites reading lots of J.G. Ballard when he was young and being struck by Ballard's very personal, distinctive voice. When Noon read Ballard it was as if he entered Ballard's mind. And that's wh...

Dear Gods.This isn't a book. It's an A1, tip-top, clubbing, jam fair. It's sandwich of fun, on ecstasy bread, wrapped up in a big bag like disco fudge...Seriously. It's a technicolour concept album, existing somewhere between Alice in Wonderland, Akira and Trainspotting. It's sex and drugs and incest and feathers and dog-fucking; it's a fractal reality that I really, really wish I'd written.I guess you have to have been there. If you have the right past - and if you've come past it far enough -

Getting what one desperately needs has hardly ever been such a mind boggling, confusing, psychedelic trip.Drugs are amazing plot devices and how Noon plays with the idea in a minimalistic setting, just using strange protagonists with weird ideologies keen on getting hooked on as hard and extreme as possible, possibly reflecting about stuff I don´t know or care about, and generally creating a disturbing and somewhat meta work that has no similar literary equivalent, it´s just so strange that one

Vurt started with a cool premise. A future Manchester UK filled with an assortment of new species of human, a new social structure, and, the central feature of the book, a new drug/game/escape from reality called vurt. One of the problems with the book is that vurt is vurt. Through the entire plot, we're left kind of fuzzy as to what it actually is. People take feathers, and ... well we're not exactly sure what happens. They see things differently, but sometimes act parts out in the real world.

I appreciate the vivid visuals and fast paced action, but could have used some of the drugs the author must have been tripping on to enjoy this book a little more. Female characters in this book are less than people and more like objects. Well actually everyone is pretty much like a game avatar with a minor blip of a back story before you go tripping down the rabbit hole.It's a book where you need to just enjoy the visuals and the journey and not worry about anything else like, why and who and m...

This is such a smart book, but for some reason doesn't have the recognition that it deserves, at least not in literary circles. It speaks intelligently on hybridity, drug culture, game culture, created communities, fantasy spaces, writing as escape...it's just crazy good. I had a prof who called this a "game narrative," one of the first novels to use the conventions of video games as part of its narrative strucure, which is, trust me, extremely cool. I have a big love for this novel, and recomme...

Insane unapologetic fiction. Where in the shit do ideas like this come from? I had an absolute blast reading this and was time after time amazed at how different this is than most everything else out there. I had read the description and had a pretty good idea it was going to be something I would like but I was in no way prepared for just how original and entertaining it turned out to be. Prevalent drugs and weird sex stuff and out there content throughout made this a winner for me from page one...

I don't leave books unfinished very often, but I just couldn't bring myself to keep reading Vurt. Noon's cyberpunk drug-culture epic strives to describe a psychedelic future/alternate Manchester, but fails quite obviously - halfway through the book, his cast of characters have yet to spend more than a few moments in the eponymous cyber-drug-world. In addition, his characters are wooden and, despite their depressing hijinks-filled lifestyle, largely uninteresting. I didn't care about them, and th...

I honestly don't what to think about this book.On the one hand, it's like a jazz festival that mixes Naked Lunch with Trainspotting. Add an alien feast, nanobot robot cooks, robodogs, The New Weird, and a vast dreamscape that goes from heaven to hell, from arty cafes to cop busts, to licking feathers to get high, to an outright possible reference to Tammuz and Geshtinana with an incestuous bent, and I STILL don't know what to think about this book.It has a clear jazzy style that jumps all over t...

3.5 starsWell, if most cyberpunk were more like this, I would be more enthusiastic about it. This was fun. And it reminded me of so many other books that I have read during my Science Fiction & Fantasy project. Like A Clockwork Orange, oh my brothers! I also kept thinking about Gravity's Rainbow, just because of the way things flowed and characters entered and exited, only to return at odd moments. But mostly, it was like going Through the Looking Glass with Alice, where Alice is actually Philip...

I hit the incest part and went NOPE. Plus the whole book is one loooong drug trip or the gang looking for more drugs. And the point is to save some guy's sister (that he's having sex with...) from a virtual drug world. And... no. I'm just so not into it.

This was amazing!! No idea how to explain it but in simple terms, society or some of society taste these different coloured feathers for different dream responses. The Vurt is this dreamworld, but separating the real world from this fantasy dream world becomes the difficult part, not only for the characters but also for the reader. Funny, smart, transgressive, literary, bold, complex and weird. The writing was exquisite for me, and I was lost in my own Vurt whilst reading this. Loved the charact...

So, 23 year old me gave this 4 stars. 37 year old me gives it 3. I remember not being able to put this down, but I must have been in a weird book phase at the time. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy it this time through - but I did have to put it down from time to time to wrap my brain around what I just read. Also, the disjointed nature of reality vs Vurt is sort of cool, but it caused me to start losing interest at a couple points because I was not sure what was going on.I think a special type o...

4 StarsVurt is one crazy weird and wild ride. A perfect setting for a David Cronenberg movie…Heck maybe even a little strange for him. This book is even more out there then John Dies at the End. The book is a blend of science fiction, the New Weird, and Cyberpunk.This is not an easy read as I found it difficult to keep tabs at times and by the nature of the story itself things are not always clear. I applaud this novel and its vision, I just had problems with the characters themselves. I never b...