Rating: 
Summary: One of the best
Review: Nicola Griffith can write. Every word she writes has a purpose and is carefully chosen. The character development in this novel, and really, everything of hers that I've read, is impeccable. Slow River takes the reader into a different time, deals with situations that are beyond anything familiar to us, but keeps the characters real and makes us care about them. I only wish she were more prolific!
Rating: 
Summary: Average to below average.
Review: Not much science in this book. The major changes in the future seem to environmental remediation and debit cards inplanted in the hand. So much for fantasic visions of the future. The bioscience wasn't too far off from what is possible today, and debit cards?, just about everyone has one now. The story follows several plotlines and at times it was difficult to understand how they related to each other. All the characters seem to be gay and it throws off the balance. The story was heavy into co-dependence which was interesting to a point, but quickly got boring. Finally, at the end, two of the characters become lovers although it seemed like there was no relationship forming, and suddenly there it was. Overall average.
Rating:
Summary: exceptional reading
Review: Not normally a science fiction reader I felt compelled to give this book a shot after reading Nicola's book The Blue Place. Slow River is a very well written book that tells an incredible story. I felt that Lore had become a part of me and I could not put the book down. The descriptions of the places and people she met in her life made me feel as if I were there. I would highly recommend this book. I will continue to purchase books written by Nicola Griffith and currently have her books Ammonite and Stay in my to read pile.
Rating:
Summary: exceptional reading
Review: Not normally a science fiction reader I felt compelled to give this book a shot after reading Nicola's book The Blue Place. Slow River is a very well written book that tells an incredible story. I felt that Lore had become a part of me and I could not put the book down. The descriptions of the places and people she met in her life made me feel as if I were there. I would highly recommend this book. I will continue to purchase books written by Nicola Griffith and currently have her books Ammonite and Stay in my to read pile.
Rating:
Summary: Literary style, science & emotion. I'ts all here.
Review: One of those books that lets me proudly hold my head on high as a SF fan. It has everything good SF has too offer, and all the good of main stream literature.
It could easily have been disguised as main stream, like the superb pure SF book "The Handmaids Tale" was, just because it's characters, depth, ideas & style are up to any standard. In addition it "happens" to be great SF. So naturally is has an interesting & plausable near future, the thought provoking play with ideas that SF enables and the hallmark of good solid SF: interesting living science.
I mean, I never thought sewage processing would hold me breathless, unless I got too close. A curiousity is that there's no mention of hetrosexual love anywhere in the book. It's not a shortcoming, but even considering that the three main characters are lesbians, somewhat odd.
A great book for anyone who likes books, and isn't intimitaded by a lesbian point of view.
Rating: 
Summary: Winner of Griffith's second Lambda Award!
Review: SLOW RIVER recently won the 1996 Lambda Award for best lesbian sf novel. Also, Dorothy Allison (author of BASTARD OUY OF CAROLINA) loved it!
Rating: 
Summary: Cyberpunk in a Society of Women
Review: Slow River" is good. I particularly enjoyed the author's ability to turn a phrase. However, the story lacked "closure".
In the story a young heiress is kidnapped and escapes into a cyberpunk netherworld. Here she hides-out looking to find herself.
The tech is good, the prose is good, and the setting was noir and gritty. However, the story is a bit thin when it comes to Lore's family which features so prominently in the beginning and end. Lore's mother, and sisters are cyphers that come to figure too largely in the story.
Finally, where did all the men and straight-het sex go? The novel seemed to exist in a society of women. The absence of male characters (except as evil doers) was a bit too obvious. This detracted from the reality of the story.
By the way, I think the "River" is the Humber.
Rating:
Summary: Uneven but Entertaining
Review: The action in this science fiction novel alternates between three different phases in the life of the protagonist, Lore van de Oest. One phase, told in the third person and present tense, consists of biographical sketches of Lore's privileged upbringing until a kidnapping gone wrong propels her, naked and injured, into a new life on the streets. The second, told in the third person and past tense, tells how she survives for three years on the mean streets with the help of an amoral hustler called Spanner, whom she joins in a life of crime. The third, in which Lore speaks in the first person, is about how Lore, now separated from Spanner, tries to go straight and build a life for herself as a shift worker in a high-tech water purification plant.
Author Nicola Griffith leavens each section with vivid futuristic detail, and she is an evocative writer with a sharp eye for character. As a writer, her choice to switch between first and third person, past and present tense -- her biggest gamble -- is also her greatest failure, as the transition can sometimes be jarring. Other than that, her prose flows as smoothly and deeply as the river of the title.
Two of the three parts of Slow River -- the ones about street life and privileged life in the near future -- are above average examples of basic science fiction themes, most worth reading for Griffith's prose. The third, about Lore's employment at the extremely well-imagined purification facility, is more original. The atmosphere of low-grade tension inherent in the possibility that some malfunction there will cause an ecological catastrophe gives an element of suspense to Griffith's novel that keeps the reader turning pages.
Or, at least, it did me. It says something, about either Griffith or me, that I read as fast as I could through chapters about surefire topics like high-tech crime and futuristic luxury because I was desperate to find out what happens to the poorly-paid denizens of a water treatment plant. It takes talent to make this sort of topic so absorbing, but Griffith has no shortage of that -- and her peers agree, and awarded Slow River various awards, including the prestigious Nebula.
Rating:
Summary: Different but good...
Review: The main character Lore has depth, but it is almost as if the author doesn't know what to do with it. She is inherently strong, didn't give up once while being held captive or even while degrading herself to survive. Only at the very end of the story do we get to see a glimpse of what true strength Lore actually has, yet the frailty of the character also blazes forth, because she finds strength only after realizing that her beloved father isn't a monster and that the newest woman in her life can actually stand up to her. Maybe even give her a hand at stabilizing her own life. There are threads left off, I would like to know what the author does with Greta and what actually happened with the mother, but all in all a solid read. Sometimes confusing but different enough to make you think.
Rating:
Summary: Different but good...
Review: The main character Lore has depth, but it is almost as if the author doesn't know what to do with it. She is inherently strong, didn't give up once while being held captive or even while degrading herself to survive. Only at the very end of the story do we get to see a glimpse of what true strength Lore actually has, yet the frailty of the character also blazes forth, because she finds strength only after realizing that her beloved father isn't a monster and that the newest woman in her life can actually stand up to her. Maybe even give her a hand at stabilizing her own life. There are threads left off, I would like to know what the author does with Greta and what actually happened with the mother, but all in all a solid read. Sometimes confusing but different enough to make you think.
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