The Peripheral (Jackpot #1) in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Oct 27, 2014 Nadine in NY Jones rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy-and-sci-fi, cyberpunk, time-travel, alternate-planes-and-histories

Typical Gibson: the first few chapters plunk you down mid-action, leaving you clueless. Some people may hate this, but I know in the end I'll feel completely immersed, so I'm trusting him to get me there.

A passage from chapter two, as our man Wilf Netherton (whom we have just met) wakes with an apparent hangover and answers a call:

"She's your fucking problem, Wilf."
He winced, the amount of pain this caused startling him. "Have you always had this puritanical streak? I hadn't noticed."
"You're a

Typical Gibson: the first few chapters plunk you down mid-action, leaving you clueless. Some people may hate this, but I know in the end I'll feel completely immersed, so I'm trusting him to get me there.

A passage from chapter two, as our man Wilf Netherton (whom we have just met) wakes with an apparent hangover and answers a call:

"She's your fucking problem, Wilf."
He winced, the amount of pain this caused startling him. "Have you always had this puritanical streak? I hadn't noticed."
"You're a publicist," she said. "She's a celebrity. That's inter species."
His eyes, a size too large for their sockets, felt grit. "She must be nearing the patch," he said, reflexively attempting to suggest that he was alert, in control, as opposed to disastrously and quite expectedly hungover.
"They're almost above it now," she said. "With your problem."
"What's she done?"
"Once of her stylists," she said, " is also, evidently, a tattooist."
... "She didn't?" he said, opening his eyes. "She did?"
"She did."
"We had an extremely specific verbal on that."
"Fix it," she said. "Now. The world is watching, Wilf. As much of it as we've been able to scrape together anyway. ..."

What's that all about? I have no idea! You just have to keep reading.

But eventually, you know exactly what is going on. I was so entwined in the story that it felt weird to finish it, close the book, and no longer be a part of that world.

Also typical Gibson: the characters are hard-assed, sort of assholes but trying to do the right thing. They are scared but courageous, and often end up succeeding almost by accident. The future is bleak but still seems liveable, and definitely feels realistic.

A few things I didn't like:
* too many characters, so I had a hard time keeping track of them (never really sure who Lithonia or Brent Vermette were);
* the entire plot basically hinges on Flynne witnessing a murder in the future, and while we do find out who did it, we don't find out why;
* the ending was a little too happily-ever-after;
* too much detail about what food the characters eat, when they have to pee, and when they sleep. The action is constantly interrupted by one of theses three things. Some of that is okay, it adds realism. But it was too much.

This book fulfills the "set in the future" category of the 2015 Ultimate Reading Challenge. ...more

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Sep 02, 2015 Susan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle, 2015

More like 4.5 stars, but rounded up since it was the first William Gibson book I've ever read and so it blew my mind. Cliff said I should have started with Neuromancer, but hey, I didn't, and here we are.

The last 30 or so pages muddied the waters and dropped it a quarter of a star, and the first 50 or so pages were hard to follow and dropped it a quarter of a star, but honestly, I loved this book. Now I want to read everything this dude has written.

It's not so much a dystopian future story, th ...more

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