But I didn't find myself really hooked at all by the first 13. It was my friend's assurance of the novel's quality and the good names of the authors that kept me reading.

So, what would you guys think of this if it were an example by an as-yet unpublished author? (I should note, too, that if you read on, you'll discover this is a "reminiscing" scene that ties in to the main of the story, which happened a few years ago):

***

Composite image, optically encoded by escort-craft of the trans-Channel airship Lord Brunel: aerial view of suburban Cherbourg, Octover 14, 1905.

A villa, a garden, a balcony.

Erase the balcony’s wrought-iron curves, exposing a bath-chair and its occupant. Reflected sunset glints from the nickel-plate of the chair’s wheel-spokes.

The occupant, owner of the villa, rests her arthritic hands upon fabric woven by a Jacquard loom.

These hands consist of tendons, tissue, jointed bone. Through quiet processes of time and information, threads within the human cells have woven themselves into a woman.

Her name is Sybil Gerard.

The only hook is that this is some type of enhanced imaging being made from an airship in pre WWI Europe. I don't know if I'm just being obtuse or what, but I don't really understnad what is going on, and I don't know why this old bat is important to me.

Moreover, I don't know that I care, based strictly on these opening 13.

Glad to hear it does get better...maybe I'll give it another try.

The very beginning was disgruntling (see above.)

The early middle was entertaining, engaging, interesting.

But now, I'm at about page 300-something, and I feel like I've just slogged through 100 pages of action-packed meaninglessness. And what am I greeted with? More oddly-tensed abstracts and tons of hopping around.

I was willing to suspend my skepticism, but now I'm thinking that with that kind of 13 and the contents of the rest of the book, it sold on the authors' names. It was an interesting concept, but disappointingly executed.

I haven't read anything by Sterling but have read most of what Gibson has written.

The tone definately has the hallmarks of the Gibson cyberpunk language, but the flow that is the hallmark of Neuromancer, Mona Lisa, Idoru etc. is markedly lacking.

There is a jarring disjointed quality that makes it a very unpleasant read. I have heard Sterling's writing called industrial and that would seem to be a good description for those first 13 lines.

I would like to have seen Gibson team with someone that was more compatible like maybe Neil Stephenson (SnowCrash, Diamond Age, Cryptonomicron and his opus series The Baroque Cycle, which are prequels of a sort to Cryptonomicron).

Its a slight difference but an important one. If you take out the strict economic rationale of having a good first 13 in novels and instead make the standard a good 1st chapter of reading then I personally believe the bar is easier to clear.

Now selling a novel (especially a first) is a completely different matter.

Ditto to you too, Matt.

I can take small doses of Sterling and find his writing almost poetic in a robotic way. It's just too much when your dealing with a novel.

I also didn't get alot of Gibson coming through, what I struggled through seemed alot more like a Gibson idea written by Sterling. It lacked the lyrical flowing quality that hallmarks Gibson.