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A review by loont
The Peripheral by William Gibson
3.0
Slowly, almost, almost, almost- and it's a faceplant.
That was my feeling reading this book reading this book. It's a bit slow to get into, to get going, to understand the characters. I actually stopped reading it once before picking it back up again. But when it does finally come into focus the complex story of a pair of parallel realities stuck in different times and separate histories interacting with each other, and the characters therein slowly having to rely on each other to accomplish a shared set of goals even though electronic communication is their only link, was fascinating.
After some meandering the two main characters are finally decided upon, a young woman with family problems in a quiet and utterly believable near future dystopia where the world is falling apart in slow motion; and a lost and troubled media consultant in a far flung, post dystopian cyberpunk oligarchy future. Slowly the events of the plot bring the two together, the future consultant falls in love with the girl from the past (but not his past), the two have a slowly budding relationship that I was eventually even cheering for as the thriller/crime/sci-fi plot happening around them sails towards a climactic conclusion.
That utterly smashes itself in the face when it tries to stick the landing. It's like an ending was used that Gibson wrote months ago before the story shifted dramatically from where he'd assumed it would go. An ending that was neither climactic nor even appropriate for the story and characters at all anymore, but feels like the due date for the final draft had jumped up on him and he had to throw something at it at the very last second. And it's such a letdown, an unnamed plot twist that was developing gets dropped entirely, the bad guy unceremoniously gets shot in the face in a way that makes you say "wait, couldn't they have just done that a hundred pages back, with other characters?" and in the epilogue the romance between the two main characters never even happened. Instead the girl ends up with the character she was realizing not 50 pages back that she didn't even like, and the guy ends up with a character that was dropped as an unimportant side character back at the beginning of the book and hasn't really shown up to do anything since, but it's treated as if this is some inevitable happy ending for the both of them.
It's such a bizarre letdown that I'm tempted to give this two stars, but somehow this book kept me reading to the end, when I'm the type of person that rarely picks a book back up and has no problem putting one down. What I'm saying is, if the planned TV adaptation goes through I sincerely hope whatever ending Gibson might have had in mind gets put in, instead of this spiraling acrobatics routine that lands so badly it ends up straight on its face.
That was my feeling reading this book reading this book. It's a bit slow to get into, to get going, to understand the characters. I actually stopped reading it once before picking it back up again. But when it does finally come into focus the complex story of a pair of parallel realities stuck in different times and separate histories interacting with each other, and the characters therein slowly having to rely on each other to accomplish a shared set of goals even though electronic communication is their only link, was fascinating.
After some meandering the two main characters are finally decided upon, a young woman with family problems in a quiet and utterly believable near future dystopia where the world is falling apart in slow motion; and a lost and troubled media consultant in a far flung, post dystopian cyberpunk oligarchy future. Slowly the events of the plot bring the two together, the future consultant falls in love with the girl from the past (but not his past), the two have a slowly budding relationship that I was eventually even cheering for as the thriller/crime/sci-fi plot happening around them sails towards a climactic conclusion.
That utterly smashes itself in the face when it tries to stick the landing. It's like an ending was used that Gibson wrote months ago before the story shifted dramatically from where he'd assumed it would go. An ending that was neither climactic nor even appropriate for the story and characters at all anymore, but feels like the due date for the final draft had jumped up on him and he had to throw something at it at the very last second. And it's such a letdown, an unnamed plot twist that was developing gets dropped entirely, the bad guy unceremoniously gets shot in the face in a way that makes you say "wait, couldn't they have just done that a hundred pages back, with other characters?" and in the epilogue the romance between the two main characters never even happened. Instead the girl ends up with the character she was realizing not 50 pages back that she didn't even like, and the guy ends up with a character that was dropped as an unimportant side character back at the beginning of the book and hasn't really shown up to do anything since, but it's treated as if this is some inevitable happy ending for the both of them.
It's such a bizarre letdown that I'm tempted to give this two stars, but somehow this book kept me reading to the end, when I'm the type of person that rarely picks a book back up and has no problem putting one down. What I'm saying is, if the planned TV adaptation goes through I sincerely hope whatever ending Gibson might have had in mind gets put in, instead of this spiraling acrobatics routine that lands so badly it ends up straight on its face.