Vurt deserved a much better sequel than Pollen; it was a post-modern surrealist, simulated-reality science-fiction classic the day it first hit the shelves. I gave it five stars for total excellence.Pollen is just...well, let me say that it lost me in the first ten pages when Jeff Noon started to write about "the doggy people". I mean, really? Doggy-people? "Puppy-girls"? And then the genetic medication that allows conception between species...that's not bad sci-fi, but that it is used for the l...

I'm already a big fan of Jeff Noon and this novel has solidified it for me. Any problems of sheer enjoyment I might have had in the one that precedes it, in Vurt, has disappeared. Maybe it's because I've learned the world and maybe it's because the pacing has improved a great deal and we're not forced to ride the storm of dreams from the PoV of a junkie.This is more of a detective novel, quite similar to Noon's later novels. It still showcases the world of dreams, a doggy world, men and women of...

I finished it, but I could use a bit of a soul scrub.It's never ideal jumping into an established universe part-way down the line, but I don't think I would have like this much more if I'd read the previous books. Main issue; it's bloody creepy.First creepy thing. The obsession with sex. Sex with anything that moves, and some things that don't. Because clearly if there was a miracle drug that allowed you to have sex with anything... and have children from that sex, everyone would be doing it. At...

Started off really well, but completely lost the plot. Much less well-written than Vurt, and ultimately a lot less interesting. I'm starting to think Noon is much better at setting out scenarios than progressing them. The opening sequence is moody, gripping and intriguing, but by the time we've left the reality tracks completely towards the end, I stopped caring and only just made it over the line (and I was skimming towards the end tbh).

I found the prose... turgid. Clearly it is supposed to be an exciting weird and sexy adventure but Noon spends so much time going on and on and not letting the story fly. Now I'm afraid to go back to my (much loved) copy of Vurt to compare.

I find it really difficult to decide how I feel about Jeff Noon's work.His future is loud and crazy and colorful and horny. And that's good. And he introduces a lot of interesting concepts. And to a large degree, he works within these concepts. However, things are so . . . just, weird, that it's hard to guess what is going to happen. On the one hand, I love to be surprised, but on the other, it feels like cheating when I don't think that I've been given enough material to be able to anticipate a...

I read Vurt many years ago. I'm quite pleased that I waited quite some years before I read Pollen. I've enjoyed both books immensely. Out of the two Pollen is definitely the more weird/surreal. However the more weird it got the more compelling it became. Some would probably find too strange but if you want something different. I would give this book a go.

I loved the idea, and the execution was quite nice, but either the translation is a bit awkward, or I’m too ace for this, so when the mystery of Persephone and her deadly pollen was solved the plot and the writing became a bit dull.

The first half of this book was great reading with intriguing characters, good mystery and well paced and just weird enough to make it even more interesting. The second half of it was absolute and utter waffling nonsense. It lost its momentum so suddenly and completely that I even lost any connection I may have had with the characters up to that point. Instead of events unfolding where the reader could unravel the mysteries behind the story one simply gets exposed to page after page of mind-num...

I need to get more Jeff Noon into my brain, I cannot get enough of him. His books are just so much goofy fun but they're maturely written and there's serious literary references all over the place and you've never met characters like this before and the story is about stories and it is all breathtaking to behold! I'm jumping back and forth reading his older nineties stuff and his newer Angry Robot releases and I'm kicking myself in the ass and cursing out my brain as to why it took so long for m...

"And Boda vanishes into the curve of a shadow that falls from the side of a rubbish ship that catches soft light from the moon that floats high and serene over the water that laps at the side of the canal that leads into the city of Manchester."What more needs to be said? Bold strides into fantasy verify that this is indeed the genre fiction that my peers in the Creative Writing department have warned me against. Arrogant, even flip sampling from classic myths, strange characters, impossibly con...

It's more like a 3.5, but I definitely don't want this looking like it's on the same level as Vurt, which I like more and more as I look back on it.Some very cool hallucinatory plunging back into this whole Vurt world, terrifying floral invasions, '90s drugged out British anarchy, and the amazing dirty conceit of how exactly all these hybrid posthumans came to be, but the last 40 pages are so are something of a letdown. Little too much "clap your hands for Tinker Bell!" in the end, and the big b...

This is the first book by Jeff Noon I've read; and, I now consider myself a fan. [return][return]This is a book that I would classify as one of the 'truer' cyberpunk books out there. What I mean by that is the setting in Noon's book plays a central role in the story itself. Make no mistake this isn't some romance, western or sleuth story thrown in a cyberpunk setting. What I like so much about this story is that Noon explores the implications of his hybrid technological/drugged-up setting throug...

Charon boatman of the lake of the dead, the best dead lake rowboatman of all time. He's taken more people more miles, to stranger places, in stranger times, with less hassle, less fish jumping in the boat, with slick flicks of oar, deeper pockets full of cash, with fewer capsizings, fewer return trips, fewer living passengers, fewer refunds, along the same fukin river and lake, and with more gravitas, for more obolus and with more depression to show for it than any other rower i could ever imagi...

I liked Vurt better but Pollen was still a great read. The universe Noon creates is incredibly weird and amazing, and really gets your imagination into a full sprint trying to keep up!

Jeff Noon's "Pollen" is written in a very nebulous, stream-of-consciousness POV. It's one of those writing styles that requires you to chew on them for a bit until you figure out how to activate the flavor crystals.The world is dense and brimming with layers, hybrid human/animal/plant characters, and a mutliplicity of 'dimensions'. The pace is a bit of an accordion--compressed in quick action one moment, then stretched out with leisure the next.Pollen straddles the line between fantasy and sci-f...

Enjoyed Vurt immensely and in the same way loved this...it mentions on the cover that Jeff Noon could be considered a Philip K Dick of the nineties and though given the genre of fiction that would be a pretty fair comparison some of the scope of the unreality sequences I would say border on the visions of the likes of epic fantasists such as Clive Barker.This was a great book that merged a recognisable future with a healthy dose of unreality that at times sailed so close to the wind that it was

I am so mad I spent like 3 days working on this piece of garbage. It started off as fun cyber-noir with some body horror and a mother-daughter plot that could have been really touching and interesting but it was just like that one dude at the party who won't shut up about his weed and boobs and it was just so boring and disappointing. Idk why I stuck it out; spite probably. But basically I finished and found ymself thinking "What the fuclk was even the point of this?"

Pollen, Jeff Noon's sequel to Vurt, is a good read, but ultimately didn't live up to my expectations. I definitely enjoyed returning to the crazy version of Manchester that was introduced in Vurt, but the story - while good - wasn't as compelling to me as Vurt's, and the cast of characters didn't come close to Scribble and the Stash Riders.The plot of Pollen revolves around a conflict between the vurt and the real. Certain characters in the vurt (who are the vurt representations of the character...