Takes off slow, then hits hypersonic speeds.

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	• Mona Lisa Overdrive William Gibson Spectra, 1989 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 47 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Classic, but not the best...

This book is definently worth the read if you are a Gibson fan. Not the best of the Sprawl series, but it does tie everything up nicely. Highly reccommended.

This book rocks. True Gibson artwork.

I could seriously not put this book down. I read Neuromancer, which I thought was an awesome book, and I read Count Zero, which was good but sort of boring. Mona Lisa Overdrive however was a true masterpiece true to Gibson. The environment, so dark and un-organic paints a dark picture in your mind that is so real and tangible in a way. Cyberspace and the computer-driven networked world also played so much of a part in this simply amazing imaginary world. When it matches with the characters so nicely you can't discount the book because it's so enthralling. I loved this book and I know a lot of others that did too (although most of them tell me it's a cult following to like Gibson's work).

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Amazing book - if you love Gibson.

While Neuromancer was a fast-paced and exciting book that could appeal to a wide variety of fans, I wouldn't recommend Mona Lisa Overdrive to anyone who isn't in love with Gibson's vision of the future. This book has the least excitement and flash, but certainly has the most depth and the best characterization.

Takes off slow, then hits hypersonic speeds.

Is this book good? Definitely. Is it worth reading? Absolutely. Is it the best Gibson can put out? Not quite. After reading this book, which appears to be the final chapter in the Sprawl series, the most I can say is that it could've been more gripping, but it wasn't, and that's really okay; Gibson is a master of his work, and the complex story he weaves of cyberspace gods and corporate strangeness- although slow to pick up and somewhat confusing- is worthy of its predecessors. True, Neuromancer and Count Zero were better- but this book has a special reward or two in store for those of us who paid attention through the rest of the series. You'll see.

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Neuromancer Underdrive

Gibson has both developed and regressed in this piece, which appears far from the noirish heights of Neuromancer, and yet somehow more mature. Mona Lisa Overdrive is a complex book, which tracks the overlapping stories of five characters, using neat chapter-size sections for each. He develops each character with startling skill, no mean feat for the man who filled Neuromancer's 300 pages with a host of electrifying descriptions, while failing to expand his main character's background beyond several brief paragraphs. The storyline, as per usual, is inane. The book is a cyberspace-Mafia thriller with Gibson's typical conspiratorial edge, and an ending that was meant to be profound - particularly to followers of the trilogy - but misses the spot. But it isn't the storyline which drives a Gibson novel, as any hardened fan will know. Gibson's true talent is growing his nebulous future world into new dimensions - this time into Japanese organized crime and the American 'urban refugee' scenario - and applying to it his extraordinary style; prose that has its roots in 30s detective fiction, yet, in my opinion, far exceeds the questionable efforts of Raymond Chandler and company. And this is where Gibson has failed this time around, inasmuch as he is capable of failing in the stylistic arena. Though in many ways it is a remarkable evolution from his uni-character, monologous works of the past, Overdrive is texturally thin. Unfortunately, Gibson shines mainly in his style, and so while he has stepped forward with this book, he has left many of his readers behind.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, page 8, 9, 10

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