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Spook Country

By William Gibson

(79)

| eBook | 9780141923581

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Book Description

What happens when old spies come out to play one last game?

In New York a young Cuban called Tito is passing iPods to a mysterious old man. Such activities do not go unnoticed, however, in these early days of the War on Terror and across the city an ex-military man named Brown is tracking Tito̵ Continue

Critics

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Spook Country by William Gibson 371pp, Viking, £18.99 A woman moves through a forest of symbols, peopled by liminal obsessives, gathering clues to a conspiratorial mystery. So might you describe Thomas Pynchon's diabolically lean and funny The Crying ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

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Spook Country by William Gibson Viking £18.99, pp310 There is a point in Spook Country when its protagonist, pop-star-turned-journalist Hollis Henry, becomes suspicious of the assignment into which she's been dragged - investigating art impresario an ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

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8 Reviews

1 person find this helpful

perhaps I preferred the old Gibson

Seems to me that now that he has abandoned the future and cyberspace, Gibson's old tics and cliches have become a bit irritating. I mean, I am all for mysterious Cuban-American semiautonomous spy organizations, gifted with superhuman cryptography abilities, martial arts skills and even musical talen ... (continue)

Seems to me that now that he has abandoned the future and cyberspace, Gibson's old tics and cliches have become a bit irritating. I mean, I am all for mysterious Cuban-American semiautonomous spy organizations, gifted with superhuman cryptography abilities, martial arts skills and even musical talents. I really dig that. But it would be easier to digest if set in a complete freaky futuristic allucination, rather than in contemporary slightly boring US.

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baffo said on Jul 5, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

Hybrid Perception and Narrative Action

I started it and it's terrific. Gibson set the reader into a very immersive narrative landscape setting up up premises he exerts when it comes to develop his sci-fi concept into a subversive, mind-blowing ecological interaction between his characters and the described environment. A novel that is to ... (continue)

I started it and it's terrific. Gibson set the reader into a very immersive narrative landscape setting up up premises he exerts when it comes to develop his sci-fi concept into a subversive, mind-blowing ecological interaction between his characters and the described environment. A novel that is totally now, since it's about the ecology of hybrid environments.

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Anatole Pierre Fuksas said on Oct 19, 2007 about the Softcover edition | Add your feedback

Not the BEST Gibson

I've followed Gibson's novels for a few years, and many are the best of their (cyber-punk) genre. 'Neuromancer', and the marvellous Bridge Trilogy are truly inspired. This feels different, and much of the narrative is building up to a mediocre climax, underpinned by some so-so takes on cyber-reality ... (continue)

I've followed Gibson's novels for a few years, and many are the best of their (cyber-punk) genre. 'Neuromancer', and the marvellous Bridge Trilogy are truly inspired. This feels different, and much of the narrative is building up to a mediocre climax, underpinned by some so-so takes on cyber-reality.
Central characters are not well drawn, and I felt all the way through that this was a forced, rushed novel. That said, a mediocre Gibson is still streets ahead of others in the field, so I'd recommend persevering with this, but it doesn't beat his stuff from the '90s.

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Ian Hodgson said on Nov 10, 2011 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

A bit on the light side

Not in the sense it's "funny" - but in the sense that in the end not much happens in the book, and while we see some continuity with previous work (through the Blue Ant agency featured in at least a previous book by Gibson), this new "world" does not look (to me) as interesting as the previous cyber ... (continue)

Not in the sense it's "funny" - but in the sense that in the end not much happens in the book, and while we see some continuity with previous work (through the Blue Ant agency featured in at least a previous book by Gibson), this new "world" does not look (to me) as interesting as the previous cyberpunk works.
If you like Gibson style, though, you will probably appreciate it anyway.

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Pamar said on Dec 21, 2009 about the Softcover edition | Add your feedback

A good read, Gibson has its own style, cryptic at times, condensed in others and more expansive in others still. The story is gripping enough however I found the end a bit anticlimactic.
It was my first time reading Gibson, and I expected more..

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Carlo said on Nov 7, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

An enjoyable book, but not what I think of when I think of William Gibson. (It's not science fiction. I'm calling it a thriller, but I don't really know if that quite fits. A bit of a spy thriller, I suppose, but not quite.) Anyway, I found the story engaging, though I was distracted by things that ... (continue)

An enjoyable book, but not what I think of when I think of William Gibson. (It's not science fiction. I'm calling it a thriller, but I don't really know if that quite fits. A bit of a spy thriller, I suppose, but not quite.) Anyway, I found the story engaging, though I was distracted by things that didn't have much, in the end, to do with the story but which seemed like the places Gibson might have branched off into something futuristic and more like I imagine Gibson's writing to be.

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Hold Your Spin said on May 5, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback