nicanical
A good follow-up to Neuromancer. Count Zero fleshes out William Gibson's Sprawl nicely, introducing a new cast, but also revisiting some characters and locations from Neuromancer for continuity.
Gibson goes with three narrative streams this time: one follows Turner, a mercenary hired to run a corporate defection; another follows budding console jockey Bobby Newmark—the titular Count; the final stream follows disgraced curator Marly Krushkhova, hired to find the creator of enigmatic box-shaped sculptures.
The story unfolds like a Greek tragedy; unlike Neuromancer where Case and Molly ran the show, Turner, Bobby, and Marly aren't so much inciting events as they are being dwarfed and manipulated by wildly influential entities: multibillionaires, multinationals, and mysterious 'voodoo gods' in cyberspace—remnants of the Neuromancer-Wintermute merger.
Count Zero's prose and pacing is good, following the same propulsive style as Neuromancer. Two complaints though: first, Gibson excessively name-drops corporations, e.g., Sony Biomonitor, Citroen-Dornier car. In moderation, it enhances the realism and grounds the world, but here it's overused and distracting; second, there are some decking sequences in the latter half but once again they underwhelm like in Neuromancer—just autopilot milk runs in the Matrix.
A good follow-up to Neuromancer. Count Zero fleshes out William Gibson's Sprawl nicely, introducing a new cast, but also revisiting some characters and locations from Neuromancer for continuity.
Gibson goes with three narrative streams this time: one follows Turner, a mercenary hired to run a corporate defection; another follows budding console jockey Bobby Newmark—the titular Count; the final stream follows disgraced curator Marly Krushkhova, hired to find the creator of enigmatic box-shaped sculptures.
The story unfolds like a Greek tragedy; unlike Neuromancer where Case and Molly ran the show, Turner, Bobby, and Marly aren't so much inciting events as they are being dwarfed and manipulated by wildly influential entities: multibillionaires, multinationals, and mysterious 'voodoo gods' in cyberspace—remnants of the Neuromancer-Wintermute merger.
Count Zero's prose and pacing is good, following the same propulsive style as Neuromancer. Two complaints though: first, Gibson excessively name-drops corporations, e.g., Sony Biomonitor, Citroen-Dornier car. In moderation, it enhances the realism and grounds the world, but here it's overused and distracting; second, there are some decking sequences in the latter half but once again they underwhelm like in Neuromancer—just autopilot milk runs in the Matrix.