eBook, 321 pages
Published Aug. 11, 2016 by Gateway.
The ghost was her father's parting gift, presented by a black-clad secretary in a departure lounge at Narita..Mona is a young girl with a murky past and an uncertain future whose life is turned upside down when her pimp sells her to a plastic surgeon in New York and overnight she's turned into someone else.Angie Mitchell is a famous Hollywood Sense/Net star with a special talent. And despite the efforts of studio bosses to keep her in ignorance, Angie's started remembering things. Soon she'll discover who she really is . . . and why she doesn't need a deck in order to enter cyberspace.From inside the matrix, plots are set in motion and human beings are being played like pieces on a board. And behind the intrigue lurks the shadowy Yazuka, the powerful Japanese underworld, whose leaders ruthlessly manipulate people and events to suit their own purposes.Or so they think …
The ghost was her father's parting gift, presented by a black-clad secretary in a departure lounge at Narita..Mona is a young girl with a murky past and an uncertain future whose life is turned upside down when her pimp sells her to a plastic surgeon in New York and overnight she's turned into someone else.Angie Mitchell is a famous Hollywood Sense/Net star with a special talent. And despite the efforts of studio bosses to keep her in ignorance, Angie's started remembering things. Soon she'll discover who she really is . . . and why she doesn't need a deck in order to enter cyberspace.From inside the matrix, plots are set in motion and human beings are being played like pieces on a board. And behind the intrigue lurks the shadowy Yazuka, the powerful Japanese underworld, whose leaders ruthlessly manipulate people and events to suit their own purposes.Or so they think . . .
Interesting ideas, worst storytelling I've read in a "popular" book in ages. If it had been a movie I'd ask for my money back.
I originally read this in high school, but I'd forgotten most of the details, so I decided to do a reread after finishing one of Gibson's newer novels (Pattern Recognition). Like Tolkien, it's one of those classics that's been copied so much that the original has begun to seem clichéd. It probably doesn't help that a good portion of The Matrix was lifted directly from this book. It also suffers a bit from an dating; in 1984, it was generally assumed that the Cold War and Japanese economic dominance were here to stay.
Having said, that, it's still an entertaining read, with an unpredictable plot and interesting views on personality and identity. It probably wouldn't make much of a splash if it were published today, but the genre today would be very different if Neuromancer had never been published.
Holds up amazingly well over the years, and easily one of my favorite books, part of one of my favorite series. I adore the stripped down writing style, the characters, everything. Bloody lovely.
Another cyberfantasy from the author of Neuromancer. A good read, but be prepared to re-read a few sections a few times to follow the plot.
