Wednesday, September 05, 2007 - Spook Country

Just wanted to post a quick review on William Gibson's latest. It's been drawing a lot of comparisons to Pattern Recognition, his last book, because both take place in present day and employ technologies that are feasible right now, not five or ten years from now. In my opinion, though, it has a lot more in common with All Tomorrow's Parties. The unfortunate part of this, however, is that it's not nearly as good a book as PR or ATP. The plot lacks any sort of tension and seems merely to be a device with which he can comment on society. He does make full use of this device and much of what he writes is insightful - but insight does not a novel make. As usual, his writing style is simply brilliant throughout (though there are a noticeable amount of clunky paragraphs this time around, usually having to do with characters putting on clothes or transferring things in and out of their pockets).

Overall, there's more than enough here to make the book interesting, but not a whole lot to make it engaging.


Cavan blogged at 6:14 PM | 0 comments


Progress

Zilch!
0/0


Listening


A.J. Croce - "Maybe I'm Amazed"



My Music


Reading


Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney

My Library


Watching


Black Book: B


Sweet and Lowdown: C


Breakfast on Pluto: B


Wishlist


Bridge of Sighs - Richard Russo


Rachael Yamagata - Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart