Rating: 
Summary: Realistic, entertaining, lucid, upbeat
Review: Po Bronson's first novel, Bombardiers, a slightly surrealistic satire on bond salesmen, was a cross between Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities and Joseph Heller's Catch-22. It won some plaudits for its literary ambitiousness, but Bronson's overkill on the pointlessness of his characters' lives left a bit of a sour taste. This novel, a fictionalized story of the inventions of the Network PC and Java by a small Silicon Valley start-up, is far less stylized, but the characters are more likable, idealistic, and inspiring. This is to Bombardiers as Wolfe's The Right Stuff was to his Bonfire. The depiction of computer nerds strikes me as realistic and sympathetic, although I'm sure not all Silicon Valley geeks appreciate the portraits. I also liked another realistic touch: there is no sex in the novel, and almost no women characters. This contrasts well with the other Silicon Valley start-up novel, Douglas Coupland's Microserfs, which starts out with a terrific portrait of life as a sleep-deprived minion of Bill Gates, then degenerates into a pilot for a sit-com that could be pitched as "It's like the cast of 'Friends' starts a software company." I was especially impressed by how Bronson set up certain characters to be the villians of the plot, then showed us that from inside their heads they see themselves, with some justification, as the good guys. The conclusion is quite surprising: the most Machiavellian of the bad guys gets exactly what he was conniving for (a huge investment by a venture capital firm), then has to live with the bureaucratic consequences. I ended up feeling quite sorry about his plight. Bronson is probably the most true-blue member of the small School of Wolfe (Richard Price is the senior member, with Jay McInerney floating in and out). I haven't yet figured out whether he has a huge amount of literary talent, or whether he'll simply be a very useful recorder of The Way We Live Now, but in either case he's worth reading. One big threat to his chances of becoming a great novelist is that he is probably the most handsome novelist since Hemingway, and that can cause no end of trouble. Steve Sailer
Rating:
Summary: Great, but lacking an ending
Review: The moment I picked up this book I found it hard to put down. Bronson does an excellent job of giving all the characters a deep background, and weaves them into a fantastic story about the inner working of the Silicon Valley. It really made me realize how tough a start up is. Nevertheless, the book abruptly ends and really left me disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Great, but lacking an ending
Review: The moment I picked up this book I found it hard to put down. Bronson does an excellent job of giving all the characters a deep background, and weaves them into a fantastic story about the inner working of the Silicon Valley. It really made me realize how tough a start up is. Nevertheless, the book abruptly ends and really left me disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Catchy, but no payoff
Review: This one starts off quite interestingly, but slowly declines into the realm of mediocre. Within the text are individually interesting nuggets of computer industry insight, but the book as a whole leaves something to be desired. An actual plot, perhaps. If this is your industry (it is mine), perhaps you'll find a hint of truth in this fictiontional account, but I didn't find the characters to be hugely realistic or engaging. The title is the book's high point.
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