Rating: 
Summary: great cinematography, poor acting
Review: A tour-de-force in which an incredible imaginary world is created for no apparent reason. "Full of sound & fury, signifying nothing." The detail is breathtaking, the archaic vocabulary is a bit belabored, the characters are two dimensional and could have been lifted from much mediocre Victorian / Edwardian fiction. Like many other reviewers I was very disappointed with the lack of plot and ending.
Rating:
Summary: Too much energy expended for little or no return.
Review: The authors labored mightily and brought forth a mouse of a story. I thought several times that the book was going to take off, but instead it fizzled again and again.Sometimes it is possible to read a titanic yarn that dies with a whimper and to say when you have finished, "That was worth my time because I was so engrossed in the character (or the ideas or the wonderful language)." But this book was a waste of the authors' prodigious talents and a waste of my precious free time. I came away from this book with nothing more than when I started. I would like to compare it with Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, surely the sui generis for titanic, rambling, possibly pointless stories. In the case of Gravity's Rainbow, I was deeply engaged with the principal character, Tyrone Slothrop, and I was bedazzled by the linguistic fireworks, and I loved the incredible range of ideas. But the end of the book was pretty much a fizzle. Actually, Gravity's Rainbow sho! uld never end, it should just loop around to the beginning and you should have to start over again. By the time you reach the end you can't remember the beginning, and the hyperbolic Pynchon masterwork could be your last and best and only book. There are better Gibson books. Try them. And try Pynchon if you like dense, mysterious and beautiful language.
Rating: 
Summary: Written for a small audience
Review: Reader, beware; this is not for the majority of Gibson or Sterling fans. If your grasp of history enables you to recognize the street address of the Hellfire Club, or the name of the woman who kept that room, you will find a fantastic cornucopia of clever allusions in every chapter of this book. However, the plot is neither as well crafted or as satisfying as the wonderful background setting, so readers without historical interests (or with poor educations) will find this book unrewarding. History buffs, especially those with interests in phrenology or early computing machines, will suffer the relative weakness of the story line for the pleasure of immersion in the theme.
Rating: 
Summary: Would have made a better movie
Review: I went to see _Alphaville_ the other night at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge. From chatting with people I concluded that the audience was composed both of Godard fans and sci-fi fans. Most of the latter left looking confused and sleepy, which I thought interesting because that movie does everything Gibson and Sterling have claimed to do, and it did it all better in the 60's. Rather than use terminology and special effects that would be obsolete in three years, Godard and his actors created a world almost completely from language. This book attempts much the same thing - little explanation for the way things work, just acceptance and a vague feeling of horror at the strangeness of a world that _almost_ looks as it should. All these other reviews of TDE are very funny, crying out for plot, oh plot, where is it? Back to _Alphaville_, we were sitting in the theatre, watching Eddie Constantine and Anna Karina walking down the hotel corridor. Godard cut the sound because there was no mood to convey with music, and nobody was talking. After about ten seconds of this a fellow in front of me shouted 'sound!' and the sound came back in. Not to say that this is as a book what a Godard film is to movies. But TDE is the one thing close to significant that either Gibson or Sterling have ever published, and when the story doesn't seem to make sense the readers shout out 'plot!' and toss it across the room. Too bad, because the negative reviews I've read seem to come from a place of total ignorance, while the positive reviews here seem equally ignorant of what's been going on for the past forty years, both in high art and pop culture. The readers sit around shouting 'plot! plot!' and when one appears that pleases them, they say 'now this is good,' meanwhile not realizing everything they've missed. I think that this is the main weakness of this book and others like it. Instead of learning from other writers, Gibson and Sterling have taken what their fans want and rebelled against it, neither pleasing their! fans nor making an impression on other readers, who have seen this stuff all before.
Rating:
Summary: Could have been better
Review: This book was fun and hard to put down, but it was also overly long and the ending, what should have been the best part due to its massive setup, was not good at all. It's like they reached their deadline and just jotted something down on the way to the printer's. Could have used cooler steam-tech.
Rating: 
Summary: A real disappointment
Review: I loved Neuromancer and Burning Chrome, so naturally I was excited about two cyberpunk authors teaming up. Unfortunately this book goes sailing across the room every time I attempt to read it. This is the only book which I have ever physically thrown, and it deserves it. Part of the reason is the run on sentences which drag on and on repeating parts without punctuation which you'd really think would have been dealt with by an editor but for some reason made it into the book and exist there to torment the reader for pages at a time until at some point the authors forget how the thing started and simply put the sentence out of its misery. This isn't the worst book I have ever read, but it is the only one to go flying across the room. I eventually picked it up and returned it to the shelf. After spending several years cooling off I asked myself if perhaps I hadn't been a bit hasty in my judgement, and picked it up again. It wasn't long before it again went sailing across the room.
Rating:
Summary: It should have been better...
Review: When I first heard that this book was in progress, I was excited. First, two of my very favorite authors were collaborating. Second, it was based on a what-if premise that fascinated me. I was expecting something not merely good, but Insanely Great. Alas, this time the sum turned out to be less than the sum of its parts. What I had hoped to see was a book combining the strengths of the two authors: the vision of how technology changes humanity that is Sterling, and the gripping storytelling of Gibson. What came out instead seemed to combine the weaknesses of the authors, especially Sterling's inability to end a story well. For all that, it's not a BAD book; these guys just plain write too well for that, and they do manage to present some interesting visions of this altered-past society.
Rating: 
Summary: Sometimes the details are the story.
Review: Like most people, apon completing the book I thought "How can you finish the book with the plot unresolved?". Apon reflection I have decided that the "plot" was just a mechanism for this sublime tour of alternate England. Powerful images dominate this book. The detail put into the characters and their surrounds had me unable to put the book down. After a couple of days I found that even my dreams were being influenced by the images contrived in the novel. I also found some parrallels with modern life. Is it possible that the society in this book was unable to cope with the technology that it had created?
Rating:
Summary: Groundbreaking
Review: I started reading this, then stopped, due to circumstances beyond my control, but when I picked it up again this week, I had difficulty putting it down. Don't read this book if you don't have the time to read it within the space of a week, if you try to read it over a longer period, you won't get through it, because the 'fiddly bits' that keep your attention and draw the subplots of the book together will fade from your memory. This is a book for reflection, and one that needs to be read more than once to get the full effect. This is hardcore stuff, and that's why it interested me. I love alternate histories, and I enjoy cyberpunk. Don't read this book if you are interested in only the tech side of cyberpunk. The story and vision of this setting are what make all the difference between a crap novel and a great one, and this is a great novel.
Rating:
Summary: All dressed up with nowhere to go...
Review: Having read several other books by both Gibson and Sterling, I expected something much better than this. The idea of the information age arriving a century early in Victorian England made for an irresistable "what if...?" Well, control yourself because this is a totally unrealized vision. Their eye for detail and potential effects of mechanical computers in the 19th. century are terrific and at times terrifying; unfortunately, this is all the book has to offer because there is little character development and I've yet to identify any sort of plot. I suspect the authors took on far too grand a concept that they either couldn't finish in a saleable format or within the publisher's deadline. In either case it's really too bad, because it's an idea deserving a more complete exploration. I suspect this would also make an excellent environment for a role-playing game. Charles Dickens meets GURPS cyberpunk.
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