Tito is in his early twenties. Born in Cuba, he speaks fluent Russian, lives in one room in a NoLita warehouse, and does delicate jobs involving information transfer.Hollis Henry is an investigative journalist, on assignment from a magazine called Node. Node doesn't exist yet, which is fine; she's used to that. But it seems to be actively blocking the kind of buzz that magazines normally cultivate before they start up. Really actively blocking it. It's odd, even a little scary, if Hollis lets herself think about it much. Which she doesn't; she can't afford to.Milgrim is a junkie. A high-end junkie, hooked on prescription antianxiety drugs. Milgrim figures he wouldn't survive twenty-four hours if Brown, the mystery man who saved him from a misunderstanding with his dealer, ever stopped supplying those little bubble packs. What exactly Brown is up to Milgrim can't say, but it seems to be military in …
Tito is in his early twenties. Born in Cuba, he speaks fluent Russian, lives in one room in a NoLita warehouse, and does delicate jobs involving information transfer.Hollis Henry is an investigative journalist, on assignment from a magazine called Node. Node doesn't exist yet, which is fine; she's used to that. But it seems to be actively blocking the kind of buzz that magazines normally cultivate before they start up. Really actively blocking it. It's odd, even a little scary, if Hollis lets herself think about it much. Which she doesn't; she can't afford to.Milgrim is a junkie. A high-end junkie, hooked on prescription antianxiety drugs. Milgrim figures he wouldn't survive twenty-four hours if Brown, the mystery man who saved him from a misunderstanding with his dealer, ever stopped supplying those little bubble packs. What exactly Brown is up to Milgrim can't say, but it seems to be military in nature. At least, Milgrim's very nuanced Russian would seem to be a big part of it, as would breaking into locked rooms.Bobby Chombo is a "producer," and an enigma. In his day job, Bobby is a troubleshooter for manufacturers of military navigation equipment. He refuses to sleep in the same place twice. He meets no one. Hollis Henry has been told to find him.Pattern Recognition was a bestseller on every list of every major newspaper in the country, reaching #4 on the New York Times list. It was also a BookSense top ten pick, a WordStock bestseller, a best book of the year for Publishers Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, and the Economist, and a Washington Post "rave."Spook Country is the perfect follow-up to Pattern Recognition, which was called by The Washington Post (among many glowing reviews), "One of the first authentic and vital novels of the twenty-first century."
Loved the characters. Would like to see more of them.
I'm am sure I can't write a review to do it justice, but it was fascinating to me.
The juxtaposition of old mainstream tech from 2006-7 with more futuristic devices, the then-time American political situation compared to today's current flavor of madness, and my own memories of playing the augmented reality real-world location-based game Ingress compared to the book's interesting locative art.
I enjoyed the dry sense of humor. There was no "Womp womp" trumpet accompanying the carefully placed sentences.
I look forward to diving into the third book in the series.
As a sequel to "Pattern Recognition", this felt like a let-down to me. It lacked focus and it ended with way too many threads that were left unexplored. One of them is the concept of locative art (a mirrorworld term for our augmented reality), so much potential left unexplored. The multi-layer stream of bits and pieces ebbing and flowing in and out of the story could be an attempt to show the world-in-flux; it didn't work for me.
Maybe the novel is in itself a kind of locative art, only meant to be experienced in the specific period it was written, else its subtle nuances of that reality in time would not be appreciated by those from a different time, at a different place. Maybe if I'd read it in 2007, while living in the post-911 reality of US, I could appreciate more the patterns exposed.
Spook Country is the second in the Blue Ant trilogy (or some call it the Bigend trilogy), but it stands on its own just fine. You don't need to worry about reading the first book (Pattern Recognition) first.
I was a little disappointed with the end. There are three plot threads that eventually come together, but you don't really get to see the results that all the players are working toward. That would be fine if there was a big payoff in the growth of the characters, but that didn't really happen either.
This is a compelling read, though. The plotting is handled well, and I really enjoyed the character of Tito, the chinese-cuban young man who all of his life has been taught a type of spycraft that is intertwined with his religion.
This book isn't really science fiction - it is set in 2006, and there may be …
Spook Country is the second in the Blue Ant trilogy (or some call it the Bigend trilogy), but it stands on its own just fine. You don't need to worry about reading the first book (Pattern Recognition) first.
I was a little disappointed with the end. There are three plot threads that eventually come together, but you don't really get to see the results that all the players are working toward. That would be fine if there was a big payoff in the growth of the characters, but that didn't really happen either.
This is a compelling read, though. The plotting is handled well, and I really enjoyed the character of Tito, the chinese-cuban young man who all of his life has been taught a type of spycraft that is intertwined with his religion.
This book isn't really science fiction - it is set in 2006, and there may be a little technology that didn't actually exist at that time, but it certainly could have. Gibson, though, writes in a way that makes the book feel like science fiction. It's a thriller that makes the present feel a little bit strange.
While I liked other W.G's books more, this one is not to be missed either. It's not a traditional sci-fi you would expect from W. Gibson, but it is nevertheless a suspense thriller filled with contemporary technologies and interesting twists. Gibson uses his standard technique of having 3-4 story-lines joining at some point together. However "standard" this technique is for Gibson, the story itself is unique and intriguing. I just with I would get to know more about one of the smallest crime families in U.S. consisting mostly of people of indeterminate race :-)
