Review: Pattern Recognition/Spook Country by William Gibson

I could have waited until I was done with "Zero History" and reviewed the entire Blue Ant trilogy of William Gibson's, but I'm feeling like typing blog stuff, so...

Pattern Recognition

I have to admit, this is one of my "comfort read" books. I must have re-read this novel a couple of dozen times. "Pattern Recognition" is found in the science fiction section of most bookstores, but I would not call it a sci-fi book by any stretch. It's really more of a peculiar thriller. Set a few years after 9/11, it tells the story of Cayce (pronounced "Case") Pollard, a marketing consultant who suffers from a peculiar psychological reaction to marketing. As such, she serves as a sort of tester of marketing ploys for big companies when she's not "coolhunting". Cayce is a follower of a web phenomenon known as "the footage", a sort of mysterious online film that is released in small segments. The creator is a mystery and has developed a cult following. Cayce finds herself in a contract with Blue Ant, an unconventional advertising agency run by one Hubertus Bigend, a Belgian Tom Cruise-lookalike who is wealthy and wants to know who is creating the footage. Bigend convinces Cayce to assist and... yeah. The story gets a bit weird from there.

I honestly can't say why I like "Pattern Recognition" so much. At the end of the book, I look back and realize it's sort of a peculiar story with a somewhat anticlimactic ending, but all the same it haunts me.



Spook Country

A sort of sequel to "Pattern Recognition", "Spook Country" is set an unspecified time after "Pattern Recognition". For the most part, there's new characters consisting of Hollis Henry - a former rock musician turned journalist, Milgrim - a drug-addled translator of Russian, and Tito - a member of a Cuban-Chinese crime family trained in Russian systema.

As with the previous novel, "Spook Country" goes off in some weird directions set in the modern world. There's a fascinating crew of background characters, including a return of Hubertus Bigend. The story also is kind of hard to describe, with a somewhat anticlimactic ending. And yet I have to say I find this one haunting me as well.



I'm about 80% through "Zero History", the third novel, and see a pattern emerging. Fun reads, though.