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Title: Count Zero by William Gibson ISBN: 0-441-11773-2 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: April, 1987 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.31 (48 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Gibson's best.
Comment: I'd never read a book that started with a bang quite like this one, with the hero of the novel caught in a lethal blast on page one. The story continues foward from there. This is one of the seminal works of the cyberpunk movement; you can be rebuilt more handsome and more dysfunctional.
Like the protagonist, the book's perspecive is shattered here, whirling away in fragmentary views of the action that follows from a handful of different characters who know nothing of each other until they all fall into place at the end and all, or most, is made clear. It's a literary style that Gibson uses for every work after this one, but never with quite the same perfection as this first time.
It's hard to not see this work in the shadow of Neuromancer. It's also tempting to see it in the light of the Star Wars Trilogy. (Yes, of course I'm talking about the original trilogy.) If Neuromancer is the captivating first work that could have started a genre all by itself, and Mona Lisa Overdrive is the somewhat dissappointing finale that you love anyway for the series it was in, then Count Zero is the edgy piece in the middle. It's the one that's brimming with the promise of everything that came before and after, and in the end, rewards rereading again, and again.
Am i making sense here? No? Well, perhaps you should read the book and decide for yourself then...
Rating: 5
Summary: The Must Read "Sequel" to Neuromancer
Comment: The second book in William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy (NEUROMANCER, COUNT ZERO, MONA LISA OVERDRIVE), Gibson deftly brings together three stories, mixing voodoo and high technology into a fast-paced tale. Almost as brilliant as Gibson's NEUROMANCER, COUNT ZERO is, nonetheless, a thoroughly entertaining read. Less heavy that NEUROMANCER, the book has definite foundations in cyberpunk, but will probably appeal to a much wider audience.
Slightly slow in beginning, but accelerating to a heart-pounding finish, COUNT ZERO is a book that should be read by Gibson fans, cyberpunk fans, and anyone who enjoyed NEUROMANCER.
Rating: 3
Summary: Not as good as Neuromancer
Comment: I loved Neuromancer and was happy to find that it was made into a sort of trilogy, but I was quite disappointed with Count Zero. I think it is a combination of the writing style, characters, and overall plot.
As part of a trilogy, it does not have all that much in common with Neuromancer other than the world it is set in. None of the main characters from Neuromancer appear except for the Finn but it's only a cameo appearance here. We get the impression that the Wintermute AI sort of split into multiple entities at some time between the stories, which is suggested to be a few years.
As for the characters, none of them really appealed to me the way the ones from Neuromancer did. The main protaganists are underdeveloped and rather bland at the end. They just weren't that sympathetic and I couldn't really get myself to care about them.
Then there is the writing style. While Neuromancer was written entirely from Case's point of view, Count Zero is seen through the eyes of three different people who take different paths throughout the story. At the end of the book the paths converge but they do so in a rather sudden and Deus-Ex-Machina like way that is hard to swallow. It felt to me like Gibson was running out of pages and had realized that he needed to tie all these plot threads together. The book could have used a couple more chapters to straighten everything out, rather than having the non-ending it has like Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (a small flaw in an otherwise phenomenal book.) This writing style however, has become common in Gibson's later novels, though fortunately in Virtual Light he learns to tie the three characters together better and in Idoru he sticks to only two main protagonists, which makes it easier to follow.
Overall, I would only recommend reading Count Zero if you intend to read Mona Lisa Overdrive (final book in the trilogy) as it takes off shortly from the end of Count Zero with some of the same main characters and developes them more. In the big picture, Count Zero doesn't stand very well on it's own and mainly bridges the gap between the beginning and the end.
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Title: Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson ISBN: 0553281747 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 06 February, 1997 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Neuromancer by William Gibson ISBN: 0441569595 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Burning Chrome by William Gibson ISBN: 0441089348 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: September, 1994 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title: Virtual Light by WILLIAM GIBSON ISBN: 0553566067 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 July, 1994 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: Idoru by William Gibson ISBN: 0425158640 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: September, 1997 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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