Count Zero by William Gibson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a dark, slow paced, gritty novel. You probably already know at this point that this is a cyberpunk story, but don't expect anything flashy or action packed here. This is the story of corruption, human greed and unfortunately the all to accurate reflection of where our current society is.
The character in this book are flawed, and largely unlikeable, but it all comes together in the last third of the book as the three stories of our protagonists come to a conclusion. The last third I couldn't put down. My only real critique of the entire story is that there are a lot of threads left unanswered and perhaps that is completely intentional on Gibson's part. It is not entirely clear from ending what Angie's abilities or implants are. Similarly, Bobby seems minor to the story with the expiation of his role in the opening and a very minor (but important) scene at the end. Both scenes are largely unfacilitated by him. Even our third protagonist, Marly sort of stumbles into her solutions too easily that it makes me wonder why the richest man in the world couldn't find them?
The more interesting aspects of this story really focus around the ancillary "characters". The AI, the Sprawl, and the voodoo deities (and their followers). What I loved though is how much of recent pop culture seems to be drawing from this. The video game Cyberpunk 2077 has a group of hackers called the Voodoo boys for example with a lot of similarities. The TTRPG adventure Gradient Decent for the Mothership RPG also holds a lot of similarities to the final chapters of this book as well.
Overall, this is a really solid and a really dark book. Don't expect any fun adventures here, but if you are a fan of the cyberpunk genre, this is a must read.
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My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a dark, slow paced, gritty novel. You probably already know at this point that this is a cyberpunk story, but don't expect anything flashy or action packed here. This is the story of corruption, human greed and unfortunately the all to accurate reflection of where our current society is.
The character in this book are flawed, and largely unlikeable, but it all comes together in the last third of the book as the three stories of our protagonists come to a conclusion. The last third I couldn't put down. My only real critique of the entire story is that there are a lot of threads left unanswered and perhaps that is completely intentional on Gibson's part. It is not entirely clear from ending what Angie's abilities or implants are. Similarly, Bobby seems minor to the story with the expiation of his role in the opening and a very minor (but important) scene at the end. Both scenes are largely unfacilitated by him. Even our third protagonist, Marly sort of stumbles into her solutions too easily that it makes me wonder why the richest man in the world couldn't find them?
The more interesting aspects of this story really focus around the ancillary "characters". The AI, the Sprawl, and the voodoo deities (and their followers). What I loved though is how much of recent pop culture seems to be drawing from this. The video game Cyberpunk 2077 has a group of hackers called the Voodoo boys for example with a lot of similarities. The TTRPG adventure Gradient Decent for the Mothership RPG also holds a lot of similarities to the final chapters of this book as well.
Overall, this is a really solid and a really dark book. Don't expect any fun adventures here, but if you are a fan of the cyberpunk genre, this is a must read.
View all my reviews
