Agency

Honestly, this would have been 3 stars, except the beginning REALLY did a good job of hooking me. I loved the concept and the execution, I loved the way the plot went from 0-100 in the first part of the book, and I loved the characters.

After the first half, I feel like it got a little aimless, though. It's very much a cyberpunk counter-espionage thriller, but includes all the really boring parts of what that entails. There's a lot of moving around, shaking tails, and a lot of waiting. Honestly, it could have been shorter, except I think Gibson sort of wanted to fill out the world of "the big stub". Unfortunately, the slow-moving (and often off-screen) London beauracracy of the future isn't exactly thrilling.

But then you get through that, and there's a pretty good ending that really made me want a third book. I like what Gibson built on to the setting he established in The Peripheral, and I like that he didn't feel the need to revisit that exact setting. You get a better idea of what the stakes are outside of one timeline.

I feel like this is a bridge to the third book, but it could have been better. That said, I'm hoping the last book wraps everything up in a satisfactory way, but there were definitely moments where I felt like I was just getting through the story to see what happened.

I listened to this book with a sinus infection so maybe I missed some of the charm, but there are not one but two exposition characters constantly asking what's going on, and they're abosulty necessary to keep the story straight. And are often apologized to because nobody has any idea what is gong on or why people are going places and doing things. There are narrative reasons for all of this, but it's a big glamor show with no real impact. In fact the last 30% of the book could have not included the protaganist and it would have gone exactly the same way. While we got flashy fights and over the top stunts with the main character keeping a stiff upper lip and going along for the ride, I still can't tell you why.

It's a narrative full of "and then" and no "there for" or "but".

Awesome characters, great scifi ideas, I still love the series and will read book 3 when it comes out, but it could have skipped the Gibson "heist admit chaos" crescendo since the heist had no payoff what soever.

This is a sequel to The Peripheral, and continues the characters of Wilf Netherton and his wife Rainey, as well as introducing the new characters of Verity Jane and AI entity Eunice (UNISS).

For those who've lost track (easy to do), Wilf and Rainey live in a future similar to what ours may be, where Trump won the election, a combination of ecological and political disasters created a massive global population drop ("The Jackpot") which mostly only the super rich oligarchy survived (aka "the Klept"), and they've discovered some kind of technology that allows them to make contact with alternate universes in the past ("stubs").

In this book we meet Verity Jane, who lives in an alternate stub in which Hilary Clinton won (she's never referred to by name but is clearly Clinton) and in which she's hired to test a brand new AI of mysterious origin called Eunice. Somehow Wilf and Rainey know that nuclear disaster lurks in the future of Verity's timeline and that Eunice is the key to preventing it, and the whole book is rather confusingly about Verity getting to know Eunice and Wilf and Rainey helping her escape from people trying to catch her and/or Eunice for reasons that are still unclear to me (what do Wilf and Rainey get out of all this altruism in other pasts that don't even exist for them?)

Much as I admire Gibson's ability to predict elements of the future (and examples of his foresightedness are many), I'm afraid his actual novels are getting less and less interesting to read as there is less and less interesting plot and more just narrative while explaining theoretical points of technology or futurism. There are some cool things in this book but the plot is frankly just watching Verity running around while trusting Eunice and Wilf etc (for no good reason), and watching Eunice be ridiculously powerful and influential while being totally benevolent and friendly (also for no good reason) and so many questions are raised that are never even addressed. I'll still read any book Gibson writes, but this one was quite a struggle to get through.

I'm honestly not sure what I think of this one. Gibson's prose is as beautiful as ever, and I thought there were some really clever moments that build on the world he built in The Peripheral. Plus, just some cool, fun action and speculative things about this "stub."

However, the Trump/Clinton stuff, while never said by name, is still so close to the surface that it feels jarring.

And my biggest issue with the story is that the protagonist doesn't DO anything. She's just along for the ride from jump. Eunice shows up, tells her to do some stuff, and then she just goes along with everything. I can't think of any choices she made other than to trust Eunice. Which is ironic for a book about agency. The more I think about it, this criticism (protagonist along for the ride) may apply to Gibson's other books, or at least his more recent ones, but it was very obvious to me this time around.

I'm giving this 4 stars regardless, because it's still Gibson.