Rating: 
Summary: Literate, Adult CyberFiction
Review: The end of the frontier, the time when you can no longer run wild but must instead run for cover, the age where you must begin to learn the law of consequences, these are the themes of Trouble and Her Friends. In the early Seventies there was a film called Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid which dealt with the closing of the West and the era when the outlaws had to adapt or die. I saw that film at the time I was coming face to face with my personal transition from the magical, radical Sixties to the
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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent!
Review: This book has truly possessed me. I read this book on or about the time I was getting on-line for the first time. I was drawn to the rendering of the computer's concepts into concrete form. I had been told that you could become anything or anybody on the Net. To think of things like firewalls and nodes, interlinks and intralinks. The idea of having to "police" the Net. Then came this book. I now have a visual image of the Net I did not have prior to Trouble. This is a very good read. I could not put it down. I actually have now purchased the entire Melissa Scott catalogue behind this book. This book, Dreamships, The Heaven Trilogy and A Game Beyond are signature books in the genre of cyberpunk. If you have a chance, try and read them all, though they won't be easy to find. It is worth it to try
Rating:
Summary: Excellent read...
Review: This is a wonderfull book worthy of any Sci-Fi reader's interest. The story moves along well and keeps you guessing until the end. Note the use of neural 'net' precluding 'Strange Days' and 'The Matrix'. I can't wait to read the rest of her books...
Rating:
Summary: Excellent read...
Review: This is a wonderfull book worthy of any Sci-Fi reader's interest. The story moves along well and keeps you guessing until the end. Note the use of neural 'net' precluding 'Strange Days' and 'The Matrix'. I can't wait to read the rest of her books...
Rating:
Summary: Slow starter, but worth the trouble
Review: This is science fiction of the cyberpunk genre. There is a new technology termed "brainworm" that allows a user to connect to the net and "surf" utilizing only their brain. Think Matrix, but without the robot takeover. Cerise and her ex-lover, Trouble, have to team up in order to stop a copycat hacker from tarnishing Trouble's name. Scott touches on the aspects of new technology, how an older generation can be reluctant to accept it and the problems that can stem from that reluctance and from the new technology itself. The book is somewhat difficult to get into at first, but it quickly comes together and turns into a great page turner.
Rating: 
Summary: two strong women, but not much more
Review: This is the only novel I have read by Scott, so perhaps my take on her intentions is off, but Trouble struck me as a novel very consciously written to flout the conventions of traditional cyberpunk. As such, Scott creates two very strong female main characters who do much to carry the story which takes place as much online as off. However, the story itself is very weak with an almost transparently thin premise and flimsy supporting characters. The novel is fairly slow paced and seems to contain an inappropriately large amount of detail on very minute points (e.g. characters' clothes are described absolutely exhaustively) while major plot points go totally unaddressed or are just steamrolled over with technobabble. The ending is EXTREMELY disappointing. Many of the story's major points go completely unexplained and most of the characters introduced in the first half of the book are subsequently dropped and never returned to. I picked up this book looking for something with a somewhat different take on cyberpunk, which Trouble does provide, but I ultimately found it to be a very disappointing and frustrating read.
Rating:
Summary: two strong women, but not much more
Review: This is the only novel I have read by Scott, so perhaps my take on her intentions is off, but Trouble struck me as a novel very consciously written to flout the conventions of traditional cyberpunk. As such, Scott creates two very strong female main characters who do much to carry the story which takes place as much online as off. However, the story itself is very weak with an almost transparently thin premise and flimsy supporting characters. The novel is fairly slow paced and seems to contain an inappropriately large amount of detail on very minute points (e.g. characters' clothes are described absolutely exhaustively) while major plot points go totally unaddressed or are just steamrolled over with technobabble. The ending is EXTREMELY disappointing. Many of the story's major points go completely unexplained and most of the characters introduced in the first half of the book are subsequently dropped and never returned to. I picked up this book looking for something with a somewhat different take on cyberpunk, which Trouble does provide, but I ultimately found it to be a very disappointing and frustrating read.
Rating: 
Summary: Already been done
Review: Well, the first thing to mention about this book is the timing. It was published in 1994, I believe, a decade after Neuromancer started the cyberpunk genre. So just about every piece of science and technology Scott uses should be very familiar to readers. (Another similar flaw is that the book is set a century from now, but the computer systems aren't nearly advanced enough). The story is basically a thriller with some science fiction behind it. Trouble, a retired hacker (a la William Gibson's Case) returns to the business to track down a hacker who is using her name and reputation. She meets up with her ex-girlfriend, and they travel across the country on their mission. This isn't that bad, and Scott's settings and descriptions are interesting enough, but the whole thing ends up in an action climax and a too-happy ending that doesn't seem real at all. The virtual reality sequences are another problem. By the time Scott wrote this, personal computers were much more widespread than in Gibson's day, so she's weighed down by reality. Sometimes it's like reading about some guy using a modern computer, which is in no way exciting or interesting. She writes these scenes in present tense, but sometimes forgets and slips into past tense. The characters weren't bad, except Scott is constantly forcing out feminist and gay issues with absolutely no subtlety. Feminist and gay issues certainly have a place in science fiction, and even in this book, but the symbolism was just too obvious (hackers and homosexuals as the outcasts of society) and at the same time far-fetched (why are all the old hackers gay?). Scott seems very committed to this particular theme, sacrificing the plot of her book, and the scientific believability, to get it out there. If you've read any book by William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, or Bruce Sterling, Trouble and Her Friends will be too familiar, and it isn't worth the energy required to get through Scott's always-troublesome first 50 pages.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing insight into the high intrigue and cyberpunk
Review: When I first started to read this book I stumbled with it at first the characters where not very developed and lacked some interest. But once the story started to fit together the characters and their motivations came out with amazing clarity. The view of the "Matrix" has always beguiled me and I have sought many books to leanr more and be entertained by the different notions of how interfacing with such technology will happen... One of the best books I have bought in awhile. My only stumbling point was the smack in the face of the sexual relations of this book... but if you have read Scott's other books you will find this book is much tamer than her other.....
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