Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #327487 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

Brilliant (but also complex)!
First realise that this is the 2nd book of a trilogy that is "Neuromancer", "Count Zero" and "Mona Lisa Overdrive". I don't advice reading this until you've read Neuromancer and have got into the whole cyberpunk vocabulary.
The plots in the storyline are deliciously challenging to unravel and Gibson certainly doesn't spoon-feed you all the threads that intertwine everything. I think putting everything together took me 24 hours after finishing the book.
The secret (and illegal by Turing police rules) unification of two AI's called Wintermute and Neuromancer has left unexplained entities in the matrix - "Yeah, there's things out there, Ghosts, voices. Why not? Oceans had mermaids, and we have a sea of silicon, see?" These matrix "voodoo gods" are referred to as the "loa" by Wig, Beauvoir, Lucas and their associates (who basically worship them). The problem is that the "loa" have found a way to inhabit the real world by designing biochips and having them grafted into people's brains. This technology provokes the interest of one of the richest men in the world who is seeking to free his mind from his cancer-ridden body. The resulting power struggle pulls the strings of all the pawns that are characters in the book. Read it, you might see what I mean?

Even better than Neuromancer (heresy?)
I loved Neuromancer, but found some of it too much of an information overload, and some of it a little too baroque and "out there". (I'm sure those don't even count as criticisms, when you're talking about Gibson). I found Count Zero just a little tighter, with a slightly stronger narrative, without sacrificing anything in the way of character, imagination, or Gibson's realisation of the Sprawl.

It was great to see Sally Shears back, and the Count was a fine young successor to the Matrix jockeys of the first book in the Sprawl Trilogy. The main plot of the hard-bitten defection specialist and the girl with biological computer implants was woven beautifully with all the other strands. What is in effect a three-pronged story line never lost focus for a second and still managed to take the reader off into a disturbing, worrying and yet enthralling new reality with the creatures out in the Matrix.

This is Gibson's best book, and up there with the best Sci Fi and best thrillers and crime books I have ever read. If there's any justice Ridley Scott will be given $150 million to film this with total creative control (and Gibson writing the screenplay).

Top marks.

POETIC DREAMSCAPES OF A DISTOPIC FUTURE...(Part 2)
I have read this masterpiece (together with the other two of the Sprawl series: NEUROMANCER and MONA LISA OVERDRIVE) during my university years, about a decade ago. Since then I have re-read it countless times.

Of the three this is my favorite: good and evil voodoo legbas as AI cyberspace avatars; life in the Sprawl comes into focus, sharply. The eye-watering smog and the ozone smell of new electronics surround a storyline that moves on deserted highways with the assurance of an armored hovercraft..

Even reading only some pages brings up powerful imagery, unforgettable prose...

Start with Neuromancer. Then this one. And then Mona Lisa Overdrive.

A Masterpiece Trilogy!!! Own them all!!!