Not Gibson at his best, but pretty good

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	• Spook Country William Gibson Putnam Adult, 2007 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 128 reviews view larger image
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Definitely Not Gibson's Best

I appreciated the fact that the seting is contemporary. Unfortunately that does not make up for the fact that it's just not much of a story.

Hmmm... yes, ok.

I read some of the reviews in here and just can't get my head around the fact that it's apparently not clear that this book is not Sci-Fi. People say the book is "dated" from the get go and contains "old tech" like, uh, GPS location devices? Hell yeah, surprise it's set in 2006, fer god's sake. Anyone who wishes to see a rerun of Neuromancer (a book written >20 years ago, which makes it contemporaneous with Jules Verne's "20'000 leagues", basically) is advised to scuttle forthwith to other authors (Charles Stross maybe?) I don't suspect Gibson will return to the genre either (but what do I know). Now this book, (John le Carré, reloaded?) is something that a future archeologist might find of use when writing a paper on the subconscious of Western Civilization of the early 21st, a subconscious aware that things are no longer Right, and that the system, having accumulated byzantine baggage and too many errors, might soon veer into decidedly interesting directions. Maybe we should all drop Rize and reflect calmly on past heresies. The story? Well, it's the usual Gibson stuff; so we have a Heist going, we have Art Objects pulling things along (we had those since Mona Lisa Overdrive, right?), we have an interesting set of Santeria deities (not necessarily of and in objective reality), we have synchronicity, a whole lot of product re/placement and artifact examination (the utterly mundane may have a story to tell, like a pay phone in a David Lynch movie), we have protagonists mainly occupied with their indecision, uncertain knowledge and fleeting visions of bigger fish. You can look the rest up in Cyberspace, I mean Wikipedia. Does it hold water? Yes, I actually wanted to know whether the Heist could be pulled off or would fail due to some freak accident. Good enough. Still, some threads may need trimming (what's with the Hook?!), additional noir could be injected, the end could be better (but Gibson and Ends do not meet well). 3.5 stars? Let's give 4.

Random thought: Gibson's next novel surely will be about artful arrangements of pieces of the Apollo 11 lunar lander inexplicably turning up in Swiss bank vaults rented by recently disappeared Russian mobsters, which leads to dark hints about the inner workings of the USUK total surveillance societies.

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Mild-Mannered Country

After reading Pattern Recognition (I'd give that 5 out of 5 stars), I couldn't wait to read Spook Country.

Hollis Henry, a former member of a 90's alternative rock band, is trying out a second career as a journalist. She's been sent out by Node, a magazine that she isn't sure exists, to do a piece on "locative art" (think geocaching meets VR). One of these artists introduces her to Bobby Chombo, the man who runs the servers where said art is hosted. The problem is he's extremely paranoid and her boss insists she find out why.

There's also Tito, a runner for a really small organized crime family. And he's being tracked by a guy named Brown, who's a covert operative of some kind with a strong sense of nationalism. But rather than get in Brown's head, we get his prisoner, Milgrim, an Ativan addict who speaks Russian. We meet other characters along the way, but the story focuses on Hollis, Tito, and Milgrim.

The story starts out slow. It took about 100 pages before it picked up. There wasn't any sense of danger looming over the characters nor was I able to determine what they were after that was so important. The three main characters are mild. Hollis seems capable of some decent snark but Gibson never really lets her loose. Tito's utilization of his Santeria faith is compelling when there's action, but it's sorely underutilized. He's a mushroom most of the time. Milgrim's Atvian experiences are intriguing but his objective seems to be avoiding a beating from Brown.

There are some minor characters which try to save us from this mild mannered and mellow trio. Chombo isn't one of them. He's annoying. But most of the characters in the novel get along so well that there's hardly any conflict.

We do find out what everyone is after. It's partly based on reality. I remember reading about the item in question in the news, but it never really seemed to garner the attention it deserved. I don't want to spoil it, but it concerns the Iraq War. The premise is believable, and what the characters set out to do seems cool but there's never any real danger. The plan is so well executed that when the story's climax comes along, I was left saying, "Oh, that was it."

William Gibson founded the cyberpunk sub-genre of science fiction, but there's really nothing in this novel that comes across as sci-fi. It's been said that the world has caught up with Gibson's vision and I have to agree. There's nothing here to chase away sci-fi phobic readers. But will they want to read it? Gibson's prose continues to be efficiently rendered, sparse yet beautiful. But as it's presented here it amounts to an ornately decorated cardboard box. A middle of the road Gibson novel is still better than most of the schlock out there.

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It was a Dark and Spooky Novel...

Much has been written about the similarities between the works of William Gibson and Don DeLillo, Certainly, as I read both Pattern Recognition and Spook Country, I couldn't help thinking of White Noise: Text and Criticism (Viking Critical Library), one of the great books of the past 50 years. Gibson captures the same sense of lurking dread DeLillo masterfully describes, but could never be accused of being a mere imitator. Here, as in his other novels, Gibson has his own way of drawing us in and pulverizing our emotions. I found this a compelling story, maybe not as gripping as Pattern Recognition, but nevertheless a marvelous story.

So, why all the negative reviews here? After reading many, which I did because I was so perplexed by the response to a book that had received considerable acclaim, I reached the conclusion that there is a core of Gibson fans who want him to write Neuromancer over and over and over again. Well, I loved that book as well, but I think Gibson has grown as an author, and his recent works are just as gripping but are not as rapidly paced as his earlier work. There's less adrenalin rush here, but much greater psychological depth. Gibson continues to grow as a writer, and when that happens some readers will be left behind, like the pop music fans who show up at a concert begging an artist to play their hit single with a bullet from 20 years earlier when the artist wants to share new work with the audience.

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Not Gibson at his best, but pretty good

I am a great admirer of William Gibson as an innovative writer and I think I own every one of his books. His earliest novels were stunning in their inventiveness. Even his next-to-most recent book, Pattern Recognition, was absorbing, moving, and interesting.

However, in Spook Country, Gibson falls a bit flat. It's hard to identify with the characters, there is a bit too much product placement happening, and in the end there's not much going on in a nevertheless complicated plot. It's boringly trendy at times and never quite builds up the sense of menace and tension a book of this genre needs.

I don't regret buying and reading the book, though I should probably have waited for the paperback, but it's not quite up to Gibson's own high standard. If you're a die-hard fan of his go ahead and buy it - if not, wait a while for a paperback version.

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

Tito is in his early twenties. Born in Cuba, he speaks fluent Russian, lives in one room in a NoLita warehouse, and does delicate jobs involving information transfer. Hollis Henry is an investigative journalist, on assignment from a magazine called Node. Node doesn't exist yet, which is fine; she's used to that. But it seems to be actively blocking the kind of buzz that magazines normally cultivate before they start up. Really actively blocking it. It's odd, even a little scary, if Hollis lets herself think about it much. Which she doesn't; she can't afford to. Milgrim is a junkie. A high-end junkie, hooked on prescription antianxiety drugs. Milgrim figures he wouldn't survive twenty-four hours if Brown, the mystery man who saved him from a misunderstanding with his dealer, ever stopped supplying those little bubble packs. What exactly Brown is up to Milgrim can't say, but it seems to be military in nature. At least, Milgrim's very nuanced Russian would seem to be a big part of it, as would breaking into locked rooms. Bobby Chombo is a "producer," and an enigma. In his day job, Bobby is a troubleshooter for manufacturers of military navigation equipment. He refuses to sleep in the same place twice. He meets no one. Hollis Henry has been told to find him. Pattern Recognition was a bestseller on every list of every major newspaper in the country, reaching #4 on the New York Times list. It was also a BookSense top ten pick, a WordStock bestseller, a best book of the year for Publishers Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, and the Economist, and a Washington Post "rave." Spook Country is the perfect follow-up to Pattern Recognition, which was called by The Washington Post (among many glowing reviews), "One of the first authentic and vital novels of the twenty-first century."

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