| Idoru |
[Jan. 25th, 2005|01:48 pm] |
Finished Idoru by William Gibson over lunch.
First impressions:
I'm impressed that anyone said anything about the nature of celebrity in 1996 that can be read today without seeming either outdated or old hat.
This is the first of Gibson's works that I have read; I'm pleasantly surprised by the sheer quality of his prose.
One thing that I was dissatisfied with, however, was the resolution of the Kathy Torrance subplot. In the context of Tokyo and the Lo/Rez organization, her threats really don't seem to be the sort of thing that would hurt Laney, especially since Gibson's gone out of the way to establish that Laney has no family or friends that she can damage. I suppose it can be argued that it's his very lack of intimates, plus his history, that makes him so protective of his reputation, but I just didn't get that from his character (plus, if that's true of him, it makes him a huge hypocrite for ever working for Slitscan at all, and there's no moment of realization that would point to that, just regret for the people he hurt.) It just seemed like a ploy, first to bring her back into the picture, and then to have Blackwell do what he does. It seemed show-offy.
Other than that, I thought it was quite good. The other characters were fairly logical in their development, and I especially appreciated the world-building - detailed enough to seem real, but without any infodumping and with little bits of things trailing off the edges of the story, as it were, to lend wersimillitude. |
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