Many of the chapters, particularly the Netherton ones, consist of someone, usually Netherton, repeating something we have just been shown in the previous chapter to someone else who wasn't observing at the time. It's never really clear to me why anyone involves Netherton in events, rather than just going direct he's a go-between and a middleman and an observer, and the one effective thing he does (fighting off a random encounter that has no lead-up and no follow-through) is entirely by accident. Verity spends most of the book as a passenger, being moved around to escape from a corrupt corporation who hired her at the start of the novel. This strict alternation regardless of what's going on and who has the most at stake at the time, and this choice of viewpoint characters, soon begin to work against the success of the book.īoth viewpoint characters are essentially passive. The author establishes a strict alternation between two viewpoint characters: Verity, in a version of 2017 California where the US election of 2016 and the Brexit vote went the other way, and Netherton, in a post-apocalyptic future descended, quite possibly, from our version of the timeline. In fact, they do almost nothing, and it's narrated at great length. They do almost nothing that has any impact on anything.
What it doesn't have much of is a plot, and what the characters don't have much of, by irony that may or may not be unconscious, is agency. This tedious William Gibson novel is clearly a William Gibson novel: it has the effortless prose, the vivid (if occasionally inaccurate) imagery, the geek-culture namedrops, the characters who are outsiders to power and the mainstream. I never thought I would use the phrase "tedious William Gibson novel," but apparently this is the version of the world we now live in. 'Among our most fascinating novelists' Daily Telegraph 'A sensual, remarkably visual ride' Guardian 'One of our greatest science-fiction writers' New York Times 'Rattles along with great pace and suspense' Sunday Times 'Dazzling, astoundingly inventive' The Times
It appears something nasty is about to happen there - and fixing it will require not only Eunice's unique human-AI skillset but also a little help from the future.Ī future that Verity fears may never be. Meanwhile, in a post-apocalyptic London a century from now, PR fixer Wilf Netherton is tasked with interfering in the alternative past in which Verity and Eunice exist.
Which is just as well since suddenly some very bad people are after Verity. Pretty soon, Verity realises that Eunice is smarter than anyone she's ever met. They call Verity 'the app-whisperer,' and she's just been hired to evaluate a pair-of-glasses-cum-digital-assistant called Eunice. Clinton's in the White House, Brexit never happened - and Verity Jane's got herself a new job. THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING NOVEL FROM WILLIAM GIBSON, THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF NEUROMANCER
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