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3.65 AVERAGE
3.65 AVERAGE
adventurous
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Loved it. The story moved fast, recurring characters were upgraded, and I still had to Google things mentioned in the book that sounded futuristic only to find they weren't fictional but real and sometimes from the past. His near futures are so close to ours that I have a mix of fear and excitement about where humanity is going - just how we should feel.
adventurous
challenging
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
The Peripheral was excellent, new ideas, new characters well told, cracking along at a good pace. This is it's sequel and tries to repeat the same success with pretty much the same ingredients, but the spark is not there. I was not worried for the characters, no sense of trepidation, all very comfortable, like a team playing a computer game in a novel.
Verity is known as the app whisperer and even though she doesn’t like working for big corporations this startup seems more interesting than most assignments, besides she needs the money. They want her to evaluate and test a set of glasses with a phone and an earbud. She’d chosen the plainer grey pair, but plugging them all in and turning on gave her a bit of a shock when the voice talks to her. It is not a recorded voice, rather it is a personal AI that calls herself, Eunice.
Unnerved by this, she decides to head to her local coffee shop, 3.7 sigma, as she walks in the door the barista pushes her favourite drink across the counter to her. It is starting to dawn on her that Eunice is not the usual digital assistant, she is much smarter than anyone she has ever met and is continually scanning everything, what makes her certain of that though is after coming out of the show a courier knocks on the door and hands her a package. In it is $100,000 that Eunice says Verity is going to need very soon…
If that was unexpected, she is contacted by a guy called Netherton, but what she really is not prepared for is to be the fact that he is from 100 years in the future from a different timeline where Brexit and Trump happened. This is very different from her timeline and he is there to stop something nasty happening with Eunice’s particular skills.
I have liked Gibson’s writing since I first came across his in Neuromancer, he has a knack of picking up the trends and projecting them into a future that might happen. It is often a future that has some positives and also some downsides. It is the same in this book, it is dripping with cool tech, drones and AI. Coupled with all of this is a deeply layered plot that is full of moments that happen and make no sense until 50 or more pages later. Snappy chapters keep the pace fast and it has this slightly sinister black ops vibe running all the way through it. The main characters have depth but the rest are a little two dimensional. I liked the use of stumps; alternative storylines to regular time travel episodes in world history that branched the other way to the timeline that you are on, it is a technique that fully messed with my head. Great stuff from Gibson once again.
Unnerved by this, she decides to head to her local coffee shop, 3.7 sigma, as she walks in the door the barista pushes her favourite drink across the counter to her. It is starting to dawn on her that Eunice is not the usual digital assistant, she is much smarter than anyone she has ever met and is continually scanning everything, what makes her certain of that though is after coming out of the show a courier knocks on the door and hands her a package. In it is $100,000 that Eunice says Verity is going to need very soon…
If that was unexpected, she is contacted by a guy called Netherton, but what she really is not prepared for is to be the fact that he is from 100 years in the future from a different timeline where Brexit and Trump happened. This is very different from her timeline and he is there to stop something nasty happening with Eunice’s particular skills.
I have liked Gibson’s writing since I first came across his in Neuromancer, he has a knack of picking up the trends and projecting them into a future that might happen. It is often a future that has some positives and also some downsides. It is the same in this book, it is dripping with cool tech, drones and AI. Coupled with all of this is a deeply layered plot that is full of moments that happen and make no sense until 50 or more pages later. Snappy chapters keep the pace fast and it has this slightly sinister black ops vibe running all the way through it. The main characters have depth but the rest are a little two dimensional. I liked the use of stumps; alternative storylines to regular time travel episodes in world history that branched the other way to the timeline that you are on, it is a technique that fully messed with my head. Great stuff from Gibson once again.
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
A bit of a step down in quality. They maintain the two POV device, but Verity’s story is just a railroad. She gets moved from place to place mostly as an excuse for Gibson to introduce a bit of cool stuff he thought of. The second POV of Wilf also doesn’t go anywhere. He’s just there to watch all of his friends do cool shit.
And the actual cool device of this series takes a gigantic back seat. All the jackpot/peripheral stuff wasnt necessary to the plot.
I still liked it, but I’d rather see more Lowbeer and Wilf do their “Nero Wolfe and Archie take on the Klept” shtick in the future.
And the actual cool device of this series takes a gigantic back seat. All the jackpot/peripheral stuff wasnt necessary to the plot.
I still liked it, but I’d rather see more Lowbeer and Wilf do their “Nero Wolfe and Archie take on the Klept” shtick in the future.
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Gestopt op blz. 250
Er gebeurt gewoon geen ene reet in dit boek. De hoofdpersonen verplaatsen zich van hot naar haar en switchen van pheripherals, maar het is totaal niet boeiend of onderhoudend. De grote kracht van Gibson ligt in het creëren van een intrigerende toekomstige werkelijkheid. Als die al bekend is uit een vorig boek, er weinig schokkends voorvalt en de hoofdpersonen ook niet beklijven blijft er te weinig over om me door te laten lezen.
Er gebeurt gewoon geen ene reet in dit boek. De hoofdpersonen verplaatsen zich van hot naar haar en switchen van pheripherals, maar het is totaal niet boeiend of onderhoudend. De grote kracht van Gibson ligt in het creëren van een intrigerende toekomstige werkelijkheid. Als die al bekend is uit een vorig boek, er weinig schokkends voorvalt en de hoofdpersonen ook niet beklijven blijft er te weinig over om me door te laten lezen.