Rating: 
Summary: No rant for Slant
Review: I did not enjoy this book. My recommendation to you would be not to waste your time with it. There isn't much of a plot. There are too many characters with no substance to them. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen. Finally, at the end there is the assault on Omphalos but it wasn't enough to suit me.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting vision with cardboard characters
Review: I have always liked Bear, so was very disappointed with this novel. The premise is interesting, the sci-fi vision is intriguing, but the characters were not developed. I just did not care about them or their individual stories. This book felt like a collage of snapshots, not a story.
Rating: 
Summary: I thought it was great
Review: I haven't read Queen of Angels yet, but I will. I've read several rants about this book that I don't understand. Bear, like most sci-fi authors, is exploring the future by extrapolating the present. Seeing a shrink used to carry a stigma (Seargent Shriver), then it was all the rage (The Bob Newhart Show - The Couch Trip - Analyze This) now your insurance company pays for it without batting an eye. What if the trend grew to where half the population got therapy? What if the employer demanded it as a prerequisite because their insurence companies wanted to reduce exposure? Violence in the workplace? Going postal? Bear also tackled the idea of "transforms". If one looks around today at tattoos, body piercing, cosmetic surgery, and hair transplants or looks to the past at removing a rib so a corset would fit better, not to mention the binding of women's feet Extrapolate that into the future where another facet of nano technology would be the ability to choose any aspect of your appearance? Another theme explored is Artificial Intelligence. Instead of silicon, could a biological form work? If it could, who would fund such a measure, who would profit from it, and what would be the benefits? I especially liked the book design. It drives me crazy when more effort is spent on a grocery store circular than on a novel in terms of typograpy, layout, and graphics. Several of the reviewers thought the book was a little slow. I thought the author was letting the paint soak in for some of the backdrops.
Rating: 
Summary: May be Bear's best book.
Review: I really can't believe that no one has given this book a ten! I really enjoyed trying to figure out all the technology and its impact on society. The impact that Vox has on society in Slant is vivid and often erotic/neurotic and in other places humorous. The artificial intelligences bring in some of the innocence and naivety of trusting youths dealing with corrupt, untrusting parents. I think I've read all of Greg Bear's novels with the exception of his latest(2nd Foundation novel) and I considered it his best ... much better than its precursor, Queen of Angels, of which I was disappointed. Anyway, just my opinion, but if the immensity of the science doesn't drag you into the story, just imagine what is really driving the whole story ... the whole world is going mad!
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting ideas, boringly presented
Review: I've read and enjoyed a lot of Greg Bear's work, but this book was a disappointment. The second chapter was a pointless, wandering, stream-of-consciousness exercise that I barely got through. I was tempted to throw the book away without reading any more. The rest of the book was slightly better, but the author appeared to be so tired and unexcited while he was writing.
Rating:
Summary: Military Grade Nano? Just say no!
Review: In an awful scene, Bear describes several bodies which were found hooked-up to Military Grade Nano. This allowed them to be molded like clay. The molders of these bodies were designing them for sexual pleasure. One body had strange folds of skin attached to its cheeks and when I found out what they were I became ill. Bear didn't go for the "Gross-Out," this was deeper and brutally visceral. In this scene Bear makes a chilling observation: If man could, he would. I was ill with the Truth of that terrible scene.Sentient machines have not aroused sympathy from me in Sci-fi novels. Slant is a BIG exception. I cared about the Thinkers. I marveled at the prose Bear used to make these machines alive. Bear consistently describes their processes in cool mechanical terms and yet I thought warmly about them. Bear's characterization of the Thinkers alone was worth the price of the popcorn.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting and Boring at the Same Time
Review: Intersting Ideas, Good Prose, but plot-wise...it lags. It slugs. I don't know what it is with much of today's so-called "cyberpunk" fiction -- for a literature about the quickly growing, fast-paced high tech future, many of the new novels trudge along like a crippled marching band. Slant could've used a new slant on pace.
Rating:
Summary: Slow start- but worth it!
Review: It doesn't pick up as fast as some of the other Greg Bear books that I have read, but in the end it really doesn't matter. I think that someone should turn this into a movie. If you can just be patient and make it to the third wave, you will not be able to put it down, guaranteed.
Rating:
Summary: Slow start- but worth it!
Review: It doesn't pick up as fast as some of the other Greg Bear books that I have read, but in the end it really doesn't matter. I think that someone should turn this into a movie. If you can just be patient and make it to the third wave, you will not be able to put it down, guaranteed.
Rating:
Summary: Turgid, trite, and meandering ... but grammar's OK
Review: It's not that I don't like nanopunk or cyberpunk. It just happens that I really despised this book and all the vapid {nano,cyber}punk that it stands for. Although such things hardly ever bother me, I was even offended by its complete lack of moral center. Or rather, a pervasive indifference to just about everything. At least with John Varley or Tanith Lee you get the impression that sex is fun. Here, on the other hand, everything is misery, trifle, and tedium. Please, make it stop.
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