Any hopeful reviews? Anyone with ARCs care to give a review? I know we've got a few scattered around in other threads, so feel free to link back if I'm being redundant.
And while we're hitting the meta-points, let's go ahead and keep this a non-spoiler thread. kthx.
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Posts: 4308 | Location: San Francisco, CA | Registered: February 04, 2004
When the reviewer off-handedly mentions the world not being at stake, as if not having some Final Fantasy "cosmic evil" and a throwaway suspense-milking plot is violating a rule of fiction, I tend to not worry.
Just sounds like the guy is expecting Panoptichtlan: a cyberpunk-SF opera instead of Spook Country: a novel is all I'm saying. It's a science fiction and fantasy book review site.
A young woman retained by a tycoon to do help the tycoon find a McGuffin?
It's deja vu all over again! (Again)
The most worrying comment in that review - to me at least - is that while WG's earlier fiction made one think, this book doesn't. And that given the underlying subject matter, it's a lightweight page-turner.
I know I'll enjoy it for the language. I just hope I want to re-read it for its substance.
----------------------------- "It may be said with rough accuracy that there are three stages in the life of a strong people. First, it is a small power, and fights small powers. Then it is a great power, and fights great powers. Then it is a great power, and fights small powers, but pretends that they are great powers, in order to rekindle the ashes of its ancient emotion and vanity. After that, the next step is to become a small power itself." --GK Chesterton, "Heretics"
Posts: 7420 | Location: Melbourne, Australia | Registered: February 02, 2003
The most worrying comment in that review - to me at least - is that while WG's earlier fiction made one think, this book doesn't. And that given the underlying subject matter, it's a lightweight page-turner.
That's because the reviewer's a lightweight fucktard. If you're a basement-dwelling, mouth-breathing reject who wears a leather trench coat and mirrorshades on warm, humid evenings, then no, the book won't make you think. But if you're a reasonably well rounded person with an eye on what's going on around the world at the moment and a reasonable grasp of human nature, then the book shines a light toward a whole creepy-crawly mass of things to think about. Look to the characters. Why do they do what they do, and what does that tell us about what's going on around us that we don't see? If that's too much thinking for a reader to do, then I recommend they watch television instead. I hear the commercials are fucking amazing these days.
So yeah, I've read it. And it's the business.
Posts: 10488 | Location: Under a hat. | Registered: March 09, 2003
----------------------------- "It may be said with rough accuracy that there are three stages in the life of a strong people. First, it is a small power, and fights small powers. Then it is a great power, and fights great powers. Then it is a great power, and fights small powers, but pretends that they are great powers, in order to rekindle the ashes of its ancient emotion and vanity. After that, the next step is to become a small power itself." --GK Chesterton, "Heretics"
Posts: 7420 | Location: Melbourne, Australia | Registered: February 02, 2003
Originally posted by Splitcoil: If you're a basement-dwelling, mouth-breathing reject who wears a leather trench coat and mirrorshades on warm, humid evenings, then no, the book won't make you think. But if you're a reasonably well rounded person with an eye on what's going on around the world at the moment and a reasonable grasp of human nature, then the book shines a light toward a whole creepy-crawly mass of things to think about. Look to the characters. Why do they do what they do, and what does that tell us about what's going on around us that we don't see? If that's too much thinking for a reader to do, then I recommend they watch television instead. I hear the commercials are fucking amazing these days.
Originally posted by TwiliteMinotaur: When the reviewer off-handedly mentions the world not being at stake, as if not having some Final Fantasy "cosmic evil" and a throwaway suspense-milking plot is violating a rule of fiction, I tend to not worry.
I agree. That's just not Gibson's bag, really, and he's been moving away from the 'At the Center of the Big Change' angle in SF for a while. Makes sense, since even Fredric Jameson points out that postmodernism is about a sense of an already-passed break that nobody noticed.
What if they gave an Apocalypse, and nobody came?
I think what was fantastic about PR was it's sense of finding crucial details in the ordinary, and how important it is to find a balance-to-ordinariness. Because, as Cayce learns, living in a spy novel *sucks*.
»» "Forget infinity. I've got books waiting for me to read them." — colin »»"Speculative novels of last Tuesday." — William Gibson
Posts: 4949 | Location: Knoxville, TN, USA | Registered: January 12, 2003
