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3.65 AVERAGE
3.65 AVERAGE
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Good story, but weird as Gibson stories always seem to be. It's a time travel story (but not really), it's a story about artificial intelligence (maybe), it might be about a nuclear war or maybe about imminent global climate collapse but it's mostly about the protagonist, Verity Jane getting driven around (sometimes literally) to witness the plot happening (she doesn't seem to have a lot of her own agency).
Given when this book was first supposed to come out (2015) and when it finally come out (2020) and how the book isn't quite set in our world, I'd really like to have seen what the first drafts of this looked like before the post-2016 cognitive dissonance set in.
Given when this book was first supposed to come out (2015) and when it finally come out (2020) and how the book isn't quite set in our world, I'd really like to have seen what the first drafts of this looked like before the post-2016 cognitive dissonance set in.
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
The book is incredibly well written and captivating (like all of Gibson's books) but... nothing really happens throughout the whole thing.
Twin narratives that gave me more questions than answers, little explanation for confusing elements, and dense and boring exposition left me struggling to get engaged no matter how hard I tried. The narrator (I listened to the audiobook) sounded like an AI voice, which made it irritatingly impossible to connect with any characters or feel like there was ANY emotion at all in the performance. I'm frustrated that I could not finish the book as I've long wanted to read William Gibson's work, but this was just so boring it was becoming torture.
Mwoah, hmmm. Een zeer langverwacht boek, het had oorspronkelijk al begin 2018 uit moeten komen. Begonnen met schrijven in 2016 gooide de Amerikaanse verkiezing roet in het eten, en werd het boek overhoop gegooid.
Het is min of meer een vervolg op The Peripheral, al denk ik dat dit boek zonder dat te hebben gelezen niet echt goed te begrijpen is. Het speelt in drie parallelle werkelijkheden, waarin er een is waarin Trump heeft gewonnen en eentje waarin Clinton won.
Wel min of meer achter elkaar uitgelezen maar erg bevredigend was/werd het uiteindelijk niet. Ik had nog de hoop dat het einde het tot 4* zou maken, maar alhoewel het idee wel aardig is, voelt het teveel on-af. Op detail-nivo overigens een prima boek, met heel veel fijne detailbeschrijvingen van mogelijke toekomsten.
"He went into the bedroom for his jacket, put it on, setting it to medium warmth."
Het is min of meer een vervolg op The Peripheral, al denk ik dat dit boek zonder dat te hebben gelezen niet echt goed te begrijpen is. Het speelt in drie parallelle werkelijkheden, waarin er een is waarin Trump heeft gewonnen en eentje waarin Clinton won.
Wel min of meer achter elkaar uitgelezen maar erg bevredigend was/werd het uiteindelijk niet. Ik had nog de hoop dat het einde het tot 4* zou maken, maar alhoewel het idee wel aardig is, voelt het teveel on-af. Op detail-nivo overigens een prima boek, met heel veel fijne detailbeschrijvingen van mogelijke toekomsten.
"He went into the bedroom for his jacket, put it on, setting it to medium warmth."
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
fast-paced
challenging
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This is an average William Gibson novel, delivering as it does excellent prose and an always interesting, anthropological take on human beings interaction with technology. Its especially strong on setting, developing and making more explicit what was implied in the previous, and IMHO superior, novel 'The Peripheral'.
One of this book's problems, at least from my perspective, was perhaps intentional. In fact, I can't imagine how it was not. The two point of view characters in the novel, Verity and Netherton, have very little agency. Very soon into the book Verity is designated to be protected by 'higher powers' and for the rest of the book, she becomes an Alice in a LeCarre wonderland. Likewise Netherton is revealed to be mostly a creature of Lowbeer, and after a brief stint attempting to pilot a drone in Verity's stub, relinquishes that position to Conner, a Haptic Recon veteran from the stub featured in 'The Peripheral'. This lack of agency for the two POV characters, combined with a plot that, despite a few brief moments where the opposition obtains an illusion of formibility, does not seem to ever put the protogonists victory in doubt, makes the book less of a page turner than I think it should have been.
One of this book's problems, at least from my perspective, was perhaps intentional. In fact, I can't imagine how it was not. The two point of view characters in the novel, Verity and Netherton, have very little agency. Very soon into the book Verity is designated to be protected by 'higher powers' and for the rest of the book, she becomes an Alice in a LeCarre wonderland. Likewise Netherton is revealed to be mostly a creature of Lowbeer, and after a brief stint attempting to pilot a drone in Verity's stub, relinquishes that position to Conner, a Haptic Recon veteran from the stub featured in 'The Peripheral'. This lack of agency for the two POV characters, combined with a plot that, despite a few brief moments where the opposition obtains an illusion of formibility, does not seem to ever put the protogonists victory in doubt, makes the book less of a page turner than I think it should have been.