BOOK #40
Monday, 09/30/07 to Sunday, 10/07/07
ISBN-10: 0399154302
ISBN-13: 978-0399154300
Amazon.com calls William Gibson "the most influential science fiction writer of the past quarter century" and Publisher's Weekly calls Spook Country "one of Gibson's best." Nevertheless, I didn't care much for this book. I generally like science fiction - especially technology-based sci fi - but this one just didn't hook me. To be fair, though, Spook Country made it's debut at #2 on the August 16th BookSense Hardcover Fiction Bestseller List and remained on the list for several weeks.
REVIEW FROM PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY:
Set in the same high-tech present day as Pattern Recognition, Gibson's fine ninth novel offers startling insights into our paranoid and often fragmented, postmodern world. When a mysterious, not yet actual magazine, Node, hires former indie rocker–turned–journalist Hollis Henry to do a story on a new art form that exists only in virtual reality, Hollis finds herself investigating something considerably more dangerous. An operative named Brown, who may or may not work for the U.S. government, is tracking a young, Russian-speaking Cuban-Chinese criminal named Tito. Brown's goal is to follow Tito to yet another operative known only as the old man. Meanwhile, a mysterious cargo container with CIA connections repeatedly appears and disappears on the worldwide Global Positioning network, never quite coming to port. At the heart of the dark goings-on is Bobby Chombo, a talented but unbalanced specialist in Global Positioning software who refuses to sleep in the same spot two nights running. Compelling characters and crisp action sequences, plus the author's trademark metaphoric language, help make this one of Gibson's best.
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