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Title: Pattern Recognition by William Gibson ISBN: 0-399-14986-4 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: 03 February, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.7 (128 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Delayed Impact
Comment: My wife and I have been reading Gibson aloud to each other for years now. His prose is so, well, poetic, it really tolerates vocalization quite nicely. After "All Tomorrow's Parties" (the most beautifully written SF novel and one of the most interesting I have read recently), we were quite excited by the advent of "Pattern Recognition" and sprang for the hardcover.
We read it aloud on a long drive together, an hour or so at a time. The "mystery" of the plot and the oblique excitement to know what happens next that it engenders kept us looking forward to each reading session. At the end, however, we finished the novel with a vague feeling of disappointment, of loose-ends being tied up too neatly, of the resolution being essentially too banal for the detail and complexity that lead up to it. Perhaps that was Mr. Gibson's point. Dunno.
However, I must say, that in the months since, points of view about current world culture that are expressed (both implicitly and explicitly) in the novel have kept returning to our casual conversation. I conclude that much of the book is profound in some subtle sense that may not effect you right away, but which will have a long lasting influence on each reader's consciousness of popular trends and their expression in media and merchandise.
A warning: as with most of William Gibson's books, there are layers here. If you are a pop and internet culture enthusiast (not to mention technologically "aware"), that is, if you are "hip" you'll "get" almost all of the book. If not, well, you may not "catch" enough of the (many) cultural references or enough of the interplay between ideas, character, and plot to make it worth your read.
Rating: 4
Summary: Haiku Review
Comment: Sick of logos and
Addicted to the next cool.
Lonely searcher Cayce.
Rating: 2
Summary: A wild postmodern ride, but headed where?
Comment: This paperback novel comes with more than 20 blurbs on its covers and first pages. That made me suspicious. More than two dozen brand names are mentioned in the first couple of chapters. I guess that's part of the plot, but this reader was bewildered by those unfamiliar trademarks and all the hype. There's also one hell of a lot of description of clothing and interior decoration. It's quite a mixed bag.
The author of several other novels, all set in the future, Gibson has put this one into the present, but a weird "present" consisting of Hotmail, domains, watermarked film footage, mysterious Russian spies, a female James Bond with a phobia for trademark logos, and lengthy e-mail messages that read as though they all were written by the same person. The heroine is drugged, assaulted, beaten, carted around blindfolded, and exposed to the strangest set of supporting players that could be imagined. In fact, they are far too strange for a novel. Gibson knows the Internet and a good deal of spook stuff--NSA, KGB, MI6, that sort of thing. But the novel lacks a life. I never did figure out why all the hocus-pocus. Only at the end can the protagonist, who lost her dearest and closest friend, her father, on 9/11, break down and cry. The writing is swift and sure, but the similes and metaphors are unpoetic, strained. Frankly, I'm glad it's over.
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Title: Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1) by Neal Stephenson ISBN: 0380977427 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: 23 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan ISBN: 0345457684 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 04 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson ISBN: 0441007554 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 08 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Neuromancer by William Gibson ISBN: 0441569595 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Signal to Noise by Eric S. Nylund ISBN: 0380792923 Publisher: Eos Pub. Date: 08 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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