I really loved Cell. I think part of the appeal was the fact that the protagonst was sort a geek himself. He wrote grapic novels for Dark Horse, IRC.
I finished the Neverending Story. It started out brilliant until halfway, when the book switches protagonists--after that it went downhill, which is a pity because I really thought it was gonna be a full 5/5. *sigh* The book loses all the Objectives from the first half and introduces a whole new cast of characters, it also becomes more surreal with very esoteric symbology in the second half, which I found confusing because it was originally m