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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
This book is hard to rate due to the three POVs that you follow throughout: Turner, Marly, and Bobby.
Turner, and Bobby especially make this an enjoyable read. Unfortunately, Marly's often overlong POV sections deserve a 2. Turner a solid 3 edging towards a 4. Bobby, I'd maybe even give a 5.
Marly's sections are pretentious, bland, boring, and stuffed with self-important name dropping. Not the fun techno-babble kind either that is so common in Gibson's books. All the famous names of art and museums you'd know if you weren't so damn plebian (This is coming from someone who majored in Fine Art back in the day). While there's traces of the high-tech world in Marly's POVs, it's too similar to the real life of someone utterly uninteresting and irredeemably so. I had to force myself through her sections, resorting to speed-reading/skimming and even then, the story made complete sense without me really knowing what truly was going on in her parts. Honestly, the book would work just fine without her at all. Very early on her POV introduces another character and that's probably all you need out of it.
Turner's takes a little to get moving from a typical Tom Clancy story to something cool, creative, and enjoyable. I somehow missed it, but it would appear that Turner is very jacked and tall. This was really only brought to my attention like 80% of the way into the book. Another character even called him a "jumped up street samurai" in addition. I guess my mental image of a medium height, sorta attractive but forgettable CIA type wasn't accurate. His intimate scenes with women were eye-rolling though, it eerily felt author self-insert.
Bobby Newmark is a real character. A dumb kid over his head, trying to be cooler and smarter than he is around people 50 times as dangerous as him. Raised by a single parent who basically doesn't exist and is poor, fell in with the wrong crowd. I was gripped and flew through his parts. Deeply saddened there wasn't more. You actually feel so bad for him. Again, another thing I didn't pick up from context clues until 80% of the way through, Bobby is about 17-18 years old. I knew he was a young punk but thought early to mid 20s. Really adds much needed context.
EDIT: I spent some time thinking about it and really want to give this a 4, but Marly craters the pacing and interest in the story every time she shows up I just can't. Turner and Bobby deserved better.
Turner, and Bobby especially make this an enjoyable read. Unfortunately, Marly's often overlong POV sections deserve a 2. Turner a solid 3 edging towards a 4. Bobby, I'd maybe even give a 5.
Marly's sections are pretentious, bland, boring, and stuffed with self-important name dropping. Not the fun techno-babble kind either that is so common in Gibson's books. All the famous names of art and museums you'd know if you weren't so damn plebian (This is coming from someone who majored in Fine Art back in the day). While there's traces of the high-tech world in Marly's POVs, it's too similar to the real life of someone utterly uninteresting and irredeemably so. I had to force myself through her sections, resorting to speed-reading/skimming and even then, the story made complete sense without me really knowing what truly was going on in her parts. Honestly, the book would work just fine without her at all. Very early on her POV introduces another character and that's probably all you need out of it.
Turner's takes a little to get moving from a typical Tom Clancy story to something cool, creative, and enjoyable. I somehow missed it, but it would appear that Turner is very jacked and tall. This was really only brought to my attention like 80% of the way into the book. Another character even called him a "jumped up street samurai" in addition. I guess my mental image of a medium height, sorta attractive but forgettable CIA type wasn't accurate. His intimate scenes with women were eye-rolling though, it eerily felt author self-insert.
Bobby Newmark is a real character. A dumb kid over his head, trying to be cooler and smarter than he is around people 50 times as dangerous as him. Raised by a single parent who basically doesn't exist and is poor, fell in with the wrong crowd. I was gripped and flew through his parts. Deeply saddened there wasn't more. You actually feel so bad for him. Again, another thing I didn't pick up from context clues until 80% of the way through, Bobby is about 17-18 years old. I knew he was a young punk but thought early to mid 20s. Really adds much needed context.
EDIT: I spent some time thinking about it and really want to give this a 4, but Marly craters the pacing and interest in the story every time she shows up I just can't. Turner and Bobby deserved better.
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Read my neuromancer review for why it’s a 3.
The increase to .75 is due to the book following 3 different sets of characters swapping between them each chapter and then wrapping them all together nicely (I think). The development of biochips was cool as well.
The increase to .75 is due to the book following 3 different sets of characters swapping between them each chapter and then wrapping them all together nicely (I think). The development of biochips was cool as well.
I've finished but I turned right around and started reading it again. It takes me a few times, and often a bit of Googling, to fully grasp Gibson's books. I want to understand this one better before jumping in to book 3.
I found this to be a disappointing follow up to one of my favorite books. I feel like Gibson intentionally flipped everything that worked in Neuromancer on it's head. Where Neuromancer had bombastic set pieces combined with meaningful moments and created a world with great depth, Count Zero is entirely minimalistic to a detriment. You will have moments where characters will sit around having a stoic contest, it will jump to other characters doing the same thing, then when we return to the first set of characters something interesting/exciting has happened while we were away. I'm not saying that this can't work, but this book fizzles. It feels like it never really gets going. I'm actually saddened by the likelihood that I wont return to this.
That said it's not a terrible book. It has entertaining moments and I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the characters. They were constructed well enough. I'd also say this book is worth it for fans of Neuromancer. This book is NOT a good first stop for people interested in the series.
3/5
That said it's not a terrible book. It has entertaining moments and I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the characters. They were constructed well enough. I'd also say this book is worth it for fans of Neuromancer. This book is NOT a good first stop for people interested in the series.
3/5
After finishing this one, I've decided to complete the trilogy. Somewhat reluctantly as I find the writing style doesn't suit me. Too disjointed and stop motion, like a 12-year-old trying a stick shift. The story is good, sometimes confusing, sometimes annoying, but I guess good enough because I keep going. I am glad there are only 3 and I will be glad to read the final one. New technologies and ideas and worlds are inviting enough.
A mercenary, an art dealer, and a computer hacker walk into a cyberpunk novel. In Count Zero, three separate storylines eventually merge and the book ends with incidents of great loss and perhaps a bit of redemption. Count Zero is book two in William Gibson's sprawl trilogy and I liked it a little bit better than it's predecessor, Neuromancer (which I liked very much), if only because the story was less opaque. Gibson's writing is again beautiful, rich and evocative. The book contains reflections on the nature of art that are filled with loss and longing. There is the great attention to detail that makes the decaying future seem lived-in and very real. There are scenes of high-tech violence and deck jockeys cowboying through the matrix, and Gibson writes them all with great skill. Because of the wonderful writing style, I found it very easy to get totally immersed in this novel, my brain not worrying too much about the structures of plot and storytelling, but instead simply riding along on waves of evocative language. There is a story, and a structure, and they all hold together very well (as best I can determine; as I mentioned, the story is a bit opaque), but that's not why I visit Gibson's sprawl. I like good writing, and Gibson writes good. After reading Neuromancer and now Count Zero, I am eager to dive into this world one more time with the final book in the trilogy, Mona Lisa Overdrive.
Nice follow up to Neuromancer. Great world building and introduction of many concepts/ideas that would become staples of the genre
Not my favorite Gibson novel, but as the story lines braid together the pace picks up. I feel like Gibson may have written this one in reverse. The use of religion by the ghost in the machine to "get things done" piqued my interest, besides the dynamism of Turner is probably the most memorable theme.
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot