A review by jrobles76
Spook Country by William Gibson

2.0

I give this book 2 stars because the "it's ok" sums it up perfectly. The reveal at the end about what the MacGuffin is, is a little underwhelming. I found the locative art stuff, what we now call augmented reality, really cool, though it still hasn't really taken off or been used to the extent that Gibson describes. There are a few cool iphone apps, but nothing major. Hollis Henry is an interesting character, but she never reaches anything approaching sympathy. Not to say she was an unsympathetic character, she wasn't evil or anything, I was just apathetic to her - and to be honest everyone in this book. I also don't know if it was just because I kept putting down the book and reading other things or if it really was hard to remember who Brown was and who Milgram was. I kept getting them confused as to "who was who" whenever I'd pick up again, until I'd read a little more (must remember Milgram is addict, Brown is "govt" guy). Bigend is still an interesting uber-rich guy who has the ability to bankroll his curiosity and hopefully find a way to use what he's found to apply it to business/marketing ventures. Though I must say that even Bigend was less than interesting in this.

There were a lot of characters in this book and even though you know that they're all going to intersect at some point, I expected to be more excited by it, but I wasn't. Given that I started and finished Apocalypse of the Dead (which does the multi-character thing way better - sorry Mr. Gibson) probably didn't help when evaluating Spook Country.

I'll probably read the last in this trilogy despite the mediocre 2nd book. Though I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone, even William Gibson fans.