Rating: 
Summary: Finnaly! fastpaced action-packed "Cyperpunk"
Review: Signal to Noise is the best "cyberpunk" book I have ever read! After indulging in the classics such as Neuromancer and Shockwave Rider, I enjoyed Signal to Noise the most. The story begins fast and maintains its speed through the end. For those who get bored with a lack of action in the stereotypical cyberpunk, this new "hyperpunk" is your answer. Constant action and plot twists help to keep the reader glued to the story. The characters are well written without being overly revealed. The typical futuristic setting is also not oppressive in this book. Nylund presents an extrapolated version of tomorrow based on the trends of today. The plot is my favorite part of this book. I became hooked with the story as it unfolded. The story blends technology, aliens, genetics, and conspiracy theory into a seamless tale of human nature and destinies. You as the reader become witness to an intergalactic struggle for power and survival. The main character, Jack, becomes a middleman between alien civilizations, unexpectedly beginning the countdown to Armageddon. This story explorers human interactions and self-exploration using technology as a backdrop. If you are a fan of the X-files you will thoroughly enjoy this novel. The author, Eric Nylund, has a bachelor's degree in Chemistry and a master's degree in theoretical physics. This education comes through strong in his work. If you can handle some thechno-babble and abstract concepts without giving up on the basic message of a novel, then this book will work well for you. I recommend this novel to fans of science fiction, cyberpunk, or just well written fiction. Signal to Noise will keep your attention from beginning to end and make you contemplate your role on this planet at its conclusion.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting story, not great literature
Review: This was exciting to read, and like some of the other reviewers I had a hard time putting it down. The story moves along briskly, mixing equal parts mystery, politics, and technology. The plot is thought-provoking, and the device of an heard-but-not-seen alien adds a layer of mystery not usually seen in first-contact scenarios. Little details about the book are annoying, though. At several points I audibly exclaimed my disapointment with the writing; there are many sentences that would have earned a rebuke in a freshman composition class. A few plot twists aren't believable or even understandable in terms of the characters' motivations. The characters themselves are paper-thin, and their emotional detachment, after the Really Bad Thing happens, left me in no hurry to buy the sequel. The main character rushes around rescuing people at the end of the story, but this line of action is poorly integrated into the plot, as if the editor told Nylund he better go back and add more people for the sequel. All in all, S2N is a fun read, but I can't help wondering if another round of polish and editing could have turned it into a classic.
Rating: 
Summary: great story for a great genre
Review: This is genre fiction people. If you want depth in a character read Henry James. There is just enough character definition since the plot is the main focus here. Thankfully you don't get caught up in a character's neurosis or whatever else character depth entails. It's just unnecessary. What's left? Lot's of fun. This book rocks. The science is amazing; leaves your head spinning. In a genre where exciting books like this one are rare gems, you gotta appreciate it. P.S. I agree with the person who criticized Isabel's personality shift after taking the enzyme. It was a far jump.
Rating:
Summary: Paranoid and Edgy
Review: Signal to Noise reads much like one would imagine a corraboration between Philip K. Dick and Larry Niven would read. The science is generally hard (with one exception: see below), but not nearly so hard as the oppressive sense of paranoia and lurking evil. Everyone around Jack, the protagonist, is a potential enemy. Every time he takes a step forward, he runs the risk of finding that he's been walking in the wrong direction. Even his good intentions can have (literally) Earth shattering consequences. And we, the audience, share his paranoia. After awhile, the reader begins to feel like he's navigating a bewildering maze of smoke and mirrors, filled with razor-wire and spring-loaded spikes. The one area where hard science gives way to soft metaphore is via the sophisticated neural-integrated virtual reality technology of the book. Here the book really starts to seem like a PDK work. In a brilliant variation of the tired, old VR theme, Nylund does not create his artificial experiences out of pixels projected on to retinas, but out of vivid metaphors projected directly into the brain. There is a very literal dream quality to those sequences, heightening the sense of paranoia and the nightmare sense of running down an infinite corridore being chased by ever-closer enemies. It is a good book. True, it could have been better. The characters could have had a tad more depth (although, in a story filled with shadows, too much depth can be a bad thing) and some of the philosophizing strike a tin note. Never the less, it is an engaging and compelling story that plays to that part of our psyche that Kafka used to explore so very well. It was the stort of story that demanded completion by me even as I came to feel stifled by the oppressiveness of the plot. It is absolutely sadistic that it leaves so much to the sequel -- and absolutely delightful that it torments the reader by doing so.
Rating: 
Summary: overrated
Review: Amazon relentlessly recommeded this book through its A.I. Shaky recommendation. Characters- couldn't care less. Terrible character development. Plot was ALL over the place, and not in a good way. Some interesting ideas, never fully developed.
Rating:
Summary: bad taste
Review: I was bit dissapointed with this book. I picked this book up for a story about contact with alien civilizations. What i got for aliens was contact with a paranoid recluse and a business shark that would be most at home in a brokerage firm. Not what i had i mind. I liked the earth based technology. The virtual world of the bubbles was well described, and details like the handgun being controlled by implant were well written. Several gift technologies are given by the aliens and i seemed to dislike most of them, the enzyme especally. These unfortunatly were major plot devices. Jack, our main character, spends the entire book running from one disaster to another and never really gets a grip on what implications his actions have. Various forces seem to be working for and gainst him. All of the characters seem to switch from being an ally of jacks at some point to being an enemy. This makes for some interesting reading. Its much more like reading a novel about spies and their double crosses instead of science fiction. It bothered me that only jack of all the characters escaped from being dramaticly changed by the end of the book. The one major problem i had was the plot device of the enzyme. The book describes it a making a persons personality more intense. Unfortunalty as most of the characters undergo their transformation, completly new personalities emerge instead of those we were introduced to only a few pages before. The most glaring example being Isabel. She was an electronic archologist who seems to have fallen into her job and seemed quite content with the status quo. After her transformation she is revealed to be a cold bloodthirsty driven women who will stop at nothing for profit. If i supposed to believe that the second character was hidden benith the first i just didn't buy it. In summary not a terrible read but by the end many of the characters were irritating and the conclusion was distastefull. It seemed to smack of writing for a sequel. Don't be decieved by its sci-fi exterior this is a spy novel if anything.
Rating:
Summary: Epic and flawed....
Review: What drew me into the book was the audacity of the concepts. The book gathers speed as it goes, it starts out as...
An ex-hacker turned academic is surrounded by campus intrigue and old enemies from his government "black ops" days...
Discovers that a signal from space gives the blueprint for a quantum communication device that allows instantaneous communication, with one problem---ALL messages are in coded. And the mysterious alien "Wheeler" offers the Key. He discovers, too late, that the mysterious alien "Wheeler" only exists to suck civilizations dry of all their knowledge and then destroy them... With humanity fighting over the alien technology the book hurtles to and through Doomsday leaving only a handful of survivors. The sequel, "A Signal Shattered", is where the survivors rally and eventually overcome. Reading both books back to back is best because the action picks in the second up where it ends in the first book.
Rating:
Summary: Implausible yet enticing
Review: This is one of those books that, as you turn the page, you keep saying to yourself, "no way, this would never happen," and yet you keep reading and reading and reading. I like the way Nylund introduces alien technology but I do not like the way the characters react. First of all, without giving anything away, the characters are way too smart. Seemingly without much trouble, they are able to adapt to and utilize technology that they are barely able to comprehend. At the same time, I think it suffices to say that they are sufficiently inhuman in their reaction to such a great loss. I won't give anything away but let me tell you that if I were in their place, that same loss would weigh very, very heavily upon my conscience.
Rating: 
Summary: Hyperpunk? Hmm.
Review: Amazon referred this book to me as one that William Gibson fans liked. If that's how you found it, keep looking-- although I don't doubt that anybody who likes this book probably likes William Gibson. The plot moved along, sure. There was some of the grittiness that you expect from Gibson or Shirley, and Nylund tried hard, without quite succeeding, to make it ring true. What was most annoying about the book, though, more than the fake street-smarts, was how friggin STUPID the protagonist was. No way a street kid-turned-spook would give an unknown alien what Jack was passing out. By the end, I was mostly reading the book in the hope that Jack would get what he had coming, but no such luck. Hang in there. Maybe Gibson only writes a book every three or four years, but they're worth the wait.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining
Review: Although I thought the writing was too technical at times, it was a fascinating journey. The ending was a bit disappointing and judging from the reviews I'm contemplating NOT reding the sequal " SIGNAL SHATTERED " .
All in all, a page turner and quite entertaining.
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