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horizon_brave 's review for:
Count Zero
by William Gibson
I recently bought a Jeep Wrangler. No, I'm not bragging. If you've never driven or even ridden in one of the base trim Wranglers, you'd be surprised about the lack of actual features. It's a very very basic truck. No power windows, doors that swing out wildly, no A/C, no power locks, a noisy and pretty uncomfortable cabin, etc. It's not a truck you buy for comfort or ease of use. What I'm driving at here (pun intended! Zing!) is that it's catered to a type of function or person. After having read Neuromancer, and now Count Zero, I believe Mr. Gibson's writing is that of the Jeep Wrangler in comparison. I'm not exclusively talking about the quality of the writing either, but also my arrogance that I could read (listen to) this book passively while doing my normal other activities, which 9 times out of 10 involve gym activities or some sort of strenous form of exercise. The book and Mr. Gibson's approach to story telling is...elaborate. The events of the story generally follow a consecutive time line, so there's no (thankfully) jumping back and forth between timelines. But the book and story is just written in a way that is hard to engage with. I suppose that lends itself to the 'cyberpunk' rough around the edges style. But unless you're expecting this style and are well prepared for no hand holding, it can be very jarring. Terminology that is not explained is tossed at the reader and names given to characters in passing makes for a very bumpy ride. Just as the base Wrangler doesn't provide you with the niceties of other cars, and expects you to just get in, grab on and go for the ride, the same is true for Gibson's series thus far.
Unfortunately, to pull this off properly... the story and characters must be top notch. And honestly while I liked the characters of Count Zero, none of them really stood out to me as really wanting to win in the end or much of anything really. Each character (of which there are 3 main protagonists, Bobby, Turner and Marley) is given a decent back story, proving that some thought was put into the characters, but it still didn't feel very engaging. Felt very detached from their emotions...Bobby Newmark, and the relationship with his mother was interesting, but it didn't really actively play a role in the story anyway.
Another bone of contention I have is the hodge podge of names and places that are tossed around. Now I've read some books with some very thick name dropping (think game of thrones), but William Gibson does this is a very clumsy way. I suppose the types of names he gives to places and characters is to place as well, but unless you really pay attention, I found myself caught up and a stew of names and places that left me baffled. Along those same lines is the stories uncanny ability to gloss over big events or tell them in a way that is so marred in the language that it's often near impossible to tell if something happened the way your interpretted it. For instance during the main mission of Turner's storyline, he's sent to retrieve one of the designers from a biotech corporation who's landing by jet. (To even get that much straight I had to read the wiki synopsis) The mission goes fubar, but due to the obscure and convoluted writing of Gibson, I didn't even know anything had gone wrong. Gibson, for better or for worse, writes in a way that tells things just happening, with no real clue or hint rather it's going as expected or something surprising happened, or the character is thrown off by an event..etc. This leads the reader to just accept that's given at face value, without knowing the context. So during the rescue mission he finds a young girl in the jet. I don't freaking know if it was part of the planned assignment or not? No emotion or inner dialogue is given, and by the end of it, I'm scratching my head thinking... 'wait...I think this Turner guy was supposed to be rescuing a man?'
Things like that just point back to my Jeep Wrangler argument. You're not given anything, you have to do the work yourself to really read into what's happening. Things are indeed "explained" later on, but even then it's done though wordy, slang that is used to set the tone and theme of the culture in the setting. So what this ultimately means is if you're not focusing on actually deciphering Gibson's masked language, you will be lost. Couple this with the speed and and rate of events. Things happen fast. And that again, I suppose comes with the nature and 'culture' of the book's theme. Even the narrator took to changing his tempo at times during events like dreams and high action sequences. Unfortunately there's no real recaps. Just reactions to the events so it leaves you wondering why is this character now reacting and thinking a certain idea.
The last major issue I have with the book ( and series so far...) is that it attempts or gives the illusion to attempt to ask some philosophical questions... but I still have no idea what those questions are.. In Neuromancer we have the merging of two AI systems, (which btw it took me midway through the book to realize what a wintermute and neuromancer were) and it seems like there should be some very "Ghost in the Machine" style question being raised as to what is real etc.. Two things with this. Since the books writing, that style of questioning has been done and gone over in so much sci fi, it's sort of cliche at this point. The anime series Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix have beaten that horse so much it respawned. That's not Gibson's fault of course. The other issue with it, is that it's not even done very well. The philosophy of the idea's raised is so subtle that I'm actually not even sure if it's intended or even there. Now there is definitely many topics of religion, sects, and cultism in the book. Voodoo has made a strong come back in the cultures of some of the cults on Earth, which seem to praise the gods or loa. (Again..NONE of this is given to you out right...I had to dig like bob the builder to get some of these info...this book isn't exactly well documented) And apparently the loa are permutations of the joining of Wintermute and Neurmancer? Now again, the subtlty of any sort of philosophical questioning leaves me feeling after I read this...Okay..what can I take away from it.. Umm I'm not really sure. At it's heart it's a book..with cyberpunkish ideas and themes, that seemed to try to make a point, but didn't quite know what it wanted to say. So it grabbed at using obfiscating language to make it sound edgy and intelligent. That sounds way harsher than intended, but I just can't see any other way to say it. I enjoyed the book, after having to literally re-listen to each chapter 2 or 3 times. It's a good book to sit down with, take notes, and actually see the names and titles of characters and places....listening to this book via audio..and I'm seeing this is a fact with all of Gibson's work...is not really viable. you'll miss out on a lot and like my Wrangler it doesn't offer power mirrors to adjust the vantage point...
Unfortunately, to pull this off properly... the story and characters must be top notch. And honestly while I liked the characters of Count Zero, none of them really stood out to me as really wanting to win in the end or much of anything really. Each character (of which there are 3 main protagonists, Bobby, Turner and Marley) is given a decent back story, proving that some thought was put into the characters, but it still didn't feel very engaging. Felt very detached from their emotions...Bobby Newmark, and the relationship with his mother was interesting, but it didn't really actively play a role in the story anyway.
Another bone of contention I have is the hodge podge of names and places that are tossed around. Now I've read some books with some very thick name dropping (think game of thrones), but William Gibson does this is a very clumsy way. I suppose the types of names he gives to places and characters is to place as well, but unless you really pay attention, I found myself caught up and a stew of names and places that left me baffled. Along those same lines is the stories uncanny ability to gloss over big events or tell them in a way that is so marred in the language that it's often near impossible to tell if something happened the way your interpretted it. For instance during the main mission of Turner's storyline, he's sent to retrieve one of the designers from a biotech corporation who's landing by jet. (To even get that much straight I had to read the wiki synopsis) The mission goes fubar, but due to the obscure and convoluted writing of Gibson, I didn't even know anything had gone wrong. Gibson, for better or for worse, writes in a way that tells things just happening, with no real clue or hint rather it's going as expected or something surprising happened, or the character is thrown off by an event..etc. This leads the reader to just accept that's given at face value, without knowing the context. So during the rescue mission he finds a young girl in the jet. I don't freaking know if it was part of the planned assignment or not? No emotion or inner dialogue is given, and by the end of it, I'm scratching my head thinking... 'wait...I think this Turner guy was supposed to be rescuing a man?'
Things like that just point back to my Jeep Wrangler argument. You're not given anything, you have to do the work yourself to really read into what's happening. Things are indeed "explained" later on, but even then it's done though wordy, slang that is used to set the tone and theme of the culture in the setting. So what this ultimately means is if you're not focusing on actually deciphering Gibson's masked language, you will be lost. Couple this with the speed and and rate of events. Things happen fast. And that again, I suppose comes with the nature and 'culture' of the book's theme. Even the narrator took to changing his tempo at times during events like dreams and high action sequences. Unfortunately there's no real recaps. Just reactions to the events so it leaves you wondering why is this character now reacting and thinking a certain idea.
The last major issue I have with the book ( and series so far...) is that it attempts or gives the illusion to attempt to ask some philosophical questions... but I still have no idea what those questions are.. In Neuromancer we have the merging of two AI systems, (which btw it took me midway through the book to realize what a wintermute and neuromancer were) and it seems like there should be some very "Ghost in the Machine" style question being raised as to what is real etc.. Two things with this. Since the books writing, that style of questioning has been done and gone over in so much sci fi, it's sort of cliche at this point. The anime series Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix have beaten that horse so much it respawned. That's not Gibson's fault of course. The other issue with it, is that it's not even done very well. The philosophy of the idea's raised is so subtle that I'm actually not even sure if it's intended or even there. Now there is definitely many topics of religion, sects, and cultism in the book. Voodoo has made a strong come back in the cultures of some of the cults on Earth, which seem to praise the gods or loa. (Again..NONE of this is given to you out right...I had to dig like bob the builder to get some of these info...this book isn't exactly well documented) And apparently the loa are permutations of the joining of Wintermute and Neurmancer? Now again, the subtlty of any sort of philosophical questioning leaves me feeling after I read this...Okay..what can I take away from it.. Umm I'm not really sure. At it's heart it's a book..with cyberpunkish ideas and themes, that seemed to try to make a point, but didn't quite know what it wanted to say. So it grabbed at using obfiscating language to make it sound edgy and intelligent. That sounds way harsher than intended, but I just can't see any other way to say it. I enjoyed the book, after having to literally re-listen to each chapter 2 or 3 times. It's a good book to sit down with, take notes, and actually see the names and titles of characters and places....listening to this book via audio..and I'm seeing this is a fact with all of Gibson's work...is not really viable. you'll miss out on a lot and like my Wrangler it doesn't offer power mirrors to adjust the vantage point...