Customer Reviews

Count Zero

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I first read this book (many years and many rereads ago) with low expectations. I'd been told that Gibson was a one book wonder, that he'd never managed to pull off a second book nearly as good as his brilliant first novel, NEUROMANCER. Gibson beat that rap, of course, with masterpieces like IDORU and PATTERN RECOGNITION. But somehow COUNT ZERO has always gotten ever so slightly lost in the shuffle.

Well, I'm here to tell you that everyone, starting with Publishers Weekly, got it wrong. COUNT ZERO is no mere repeat of Neuromancer. It's a different beast altogether. It's older, subtler, and stranger. It's Neuromancer's hard-boiled street chic all grown up and with grown-up-sized problems. The characters are real, complex, and unforgettable. And the central image of the book - though I can't describe it without giving much of the plot away - generates one of the most hauntingly beautiful moments in all of science fiction.

If you're one of those Gibson fans who hasn't quite gotten around to reading COUNT ZERO, you're in for a rare treat.

The first paragraph of this book sets the narrative tone for the rest of the work, indeed, it is the trademark style of William Gibson and his growing body of science fiction work. Turner is a mercenary in a not-to-distant future earth civilization. In this networked world, multinational mega-corporations, with names like Maas Biolabs and Hosaka wield enormous power especially over the network and the cyberspace world it encompasses.

In these corporations, genius scientists have lifetime contracts. They are well-paid prisoners of these giant enterprises. One such scientist, Christopher Mitchell, a man credited with creating the biochip, a replacement for the silicon chip, wants to leave his current employer Mass Biolabs and join rival Hosaka. The latter commissioned a reconstituted Turner with the job of bringing Mitchell safely out. "It took the Dutchman and his team three months to put Turner together again," the author writes. "They cloned a square meter of skin for him, grew it on slabs of collagen and shark-cartilage polysaccharides. They bought eyes and genitals on the open market. The eyes were green."

Count Zero is the second in a trilogy Gibson has created based on a networked society. The three books explore the notion of information as a life force unto itself that can be stored, manipulated, and evolved into different life forms. In the telling of his tales, Gibson introduces the reader to a rich assortment of unforgettable characters.

Picking up where Neuromancer left off, I can understand why Count Zero was Gibson's favorite of the Sprawl series. He continues to combine cyberpunk with a sense of biopunk, capturing the reader from page one with a description of doctors rebuilding an agent from a description and body parts bought on the black market.

We then watch as three seemingly separate story lines unfold, wait to see how Gibson is going to bring them all together. This book deals with everyone from rising cowboy, to top Hosaka agent, to struggling artist, to super rich vat dweller. I felt that the ending could have maybe been a little better, but did pull all three story lines and almost every major character together for one dynamic finish.

I love to watch the interaction of Gibson's characters, as he is always creating dark and different characters that are often hated by the readers. I guess that is what I like about them. They're real characters they one would expect to find in the slums of the Sprawl, or working for Neotech, not just stereotype heroes.

Throwing in hot cyberdecks, double-agents, lots of drugs, more awesome biotechnology, combined with Gibson's unique characters, this book is a must read for any fan of Neuromancer, Gibson, or Cyberpunk.

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.

This is my second Gibson novel behind Neuromancer, and I'm just as impressed as I was with the first. Excellent writing, although the fragmented sentences do get annoying. Nonetheless, I'm always taken by his mastery of the language, and how well Gibson can take you away to another world.

My one problem lies with the publisher, Ace Books out of New York. The paperback I purchased was falling apart withing a few days, and pages detaching by the time I was through reading. I will never purchase a book in their name again.

I found Zero ten times more interesting than Neuromancer. The characters are more fleshed out and the action is a lot more intense. The best part is that even though Zero is the second installment of Gibson's "Sprawl" trilogy (Neuromancer - Zero - Mona Lisa Overdrive) you need not have read Neuromancer beforehand.

Gibson is the granddaddy of cyberpunk and his books are worth reading if only to see where this type of sci fi came from but if you want die hard cyberpunk then taken to the max then read Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs books or even Stephenson's Snow Crash. You get more bang for your buck, IMO.

What a book! William Gibson writes about an artificial intelligence which expresses itself by building Joseph Cornell boxes! Read about Joseph Cornell first (and look at some of his boxes... try MOMA, or search Amazon), then read this book! Wow.

I really, really, really expected (and wanted) to love this book. When I first curled up with it, I was very anxious to dive right in. I love geeky techno-fi, sci-fi, and Gibson, as a general rule. But something just didn't work for me in Count_Zero.

I think it was not so much the story, which was satisfying, as much as the jerky cadance of Gibson's style in this book that was off-putting. I do not remember having to work so hard with the prose of Neuromancer. This was a significant issue for me, in that Count_Zero quickly became so fragmented and disjointed in its delivery that I struggled to remain in the flow. This, in turn, nearly ruined the otherwise enjoyable experience for me.

I would recommend Count_Zero - with a dash of trepidation. Sadly, I feel as if I missed something. I look at all these great reviews and I have to shrug my shoulders: it could very well just be me. Or maybe my expectations were out of whack. Or, I wasn't in the right mood. Or, Neal Stephenson has really spoiled me (similar to what happens to music in general after being exposed to Steely Dan). Or, most likely, I should have just read this immediately upon the heels of Neuromancer.

Count Zero is considered by many to be the sequel to Neuromancer. Upon finishing it, I was surprised as to how little this story had anything to do with Neuromancer. Taken at face value, Count Zero almost works as an independent novel, although without having first read Neuromancer, the reader would probably have a lot of difficulty making sense of the setting and terminology. However, after giving some thought to the implications of some of the more obscure events that took place in Count Zero, I have discovered a handful of important connections to Neuromancer. These discoveries came to me days later as I mulled over some of the unanswered questions presented by this novel, as well as the handful of direct references to Neuromancer that were only touched upon. Reading Mona Lisa Overdrive after Count Zero also proved vital to bridging the gaps between the three novels, finally showing how they work together as a trilogy. This series does not spell anything out; it's the reader's job to put it all together through various clues spread throughout. So, if you think you're going to read either this book or the whole trilogy and be done with it: No, it doesn't work that way with these books. They get stuck in your brain, and as far as I know, they'll be there forever as your mind tries to put the final few pieces (which it can't identify) into the puzzle (which it only thinks it understands). The scariest part is that I don't think I'm exaggerating. In my mid-40s I'll probably get a brain aneurysm and a surgeon will have to pull off an emergency Neuromancer removal procedure to eradicate the source of the stress... jam a pencil in there and twist it around, that should do! Whoops, I think I got a little side-tracked there.

Count Zero follows the stories of three separate people throughout the world that Neuromancer set up. I was expecting the stories to come together into an impressive finale, but finished the novel disappointed. I won't spoil anything for you, but the three stories do not mix together as much as I would have liked.

The character depth is much improved over Neuromancer. I really felt as though I knew exactly what was going on in these characters' heads, and they're all very likable characters in their own ways. The characters are about as opposite from one another as you can get, making it somewhat refreshing as Gibson switches between them. I also loved the Voodoo elements to this book, especially the secondary characters who are involved in it. They are surprisingly likable for the image they portray. Voodoo is not just in this book for kicks and giggles, Gibson uses it to add another dimension to his story, and to thicken the existing atmosphere.

Overall, great book. I just wish the three stories had been more closely tied together. If you plan on reading Count Zero, then plan on reading Mona Lisa Overdrive as well. No ifs, ands, or buts.

William Gibson does an excellent job in this installment of his Sprawl series. He carefully weaves threads of Neuromancer into this novel without taking anything away from the story of Count Zero. Gibson did an exceptional job at creating an original story while at the same time bringing back some of the favorite quirks. Such as the Hosaka decks and the various cowboys roaming the matrix.
Gibson's ability to construct three seemingly completely different story lines into one novel and then wonderfully bringing them together in the end is outstanding. One immediately gets drawn into the lives of each of the characters simpathizing instantaneously with thier plights. The diversity with which each of his characters is faced makes for nonstop action throughout the book.