Overdrive over too soon (Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson)

Member Name: nlingwood

Product:	Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson
Date:	14/08/00 (23 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast-paced future

Disadvantages: The series is over

Concluding William Gibson's Sprawl series, this follows the cyberpunk novels Neuromancer and Count Zero. Their events, as hackers and criminals meddle in the Matrix of cyberspace, reach fruition.

Gibson brings together a still more disparate group of characters, more separate strands than his previous works, to show new areas of this possible future. Low-life Mona is taken off the street as part of some unknown conspiracy. Kumiko, daughter of a Yakuza leader, visits London and its criminal underworld. Slick Henry, suffering the effects of personality adjustment as a punishment for theft, lives on the wreckage of the US rustbelt. Angela Mitchell, world-famous stim star, finds that forces are conspiring against her. Familiar characters from Neuromancer return to conclude what started there.

The future presented is dark, gritty and unpredictable. Technology, already advanced, is moving fast. Yet at the same time there are surroundings of decay; discarded futures past. Slick lives on these remains, recycling and rebuilding discarded technology. People and action shift between cities, from real life to cyberspace. And, concluding the theme developed through the series, the distinction between human and computer intelligence is blurred to invisibility.

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