Again, Gibson's gift for texture stands him in good stead. Mona Lisa Overdrive actually has much more, and much better, action than Neuromancer, though with a narrative much less tight (not to mention focused) than that of Count Zero. Much of this - exactly how all of these characters relate to one another - remains frustratingly opaque until you get into the book's final third. Finally, Slick Henry is a lowlife from the Sprawl who finds himself looking after Angie's catatonic lover, Bobby, who's jacked into the matrix where he's apparently experiencing something of staggering import. But Sally/Molly ain't the sort of girl to take this kind of thing lying down, and decides to double-cross and get the drop on her employers, by kidnapping Angie ahead of schedule to protect her.

Sally/Molly is being blackmailed to participate in a plan to kidnap Angie, using a young, clueless prostitute, Mona (also briefly referenced in Neuromancer) to undergo cosmetic surgery and replace her. Kumiko is a young Japanese girl sent by her yakuza father to safety in England, away from an incipient gangland war, only to find herself embroiled in a deliriously confused scheme involving Case's cohort Molly from Neuromancer, now living under the name Sally Shears. We are introduced to Angie Mitchell, a cyberspace celebrity with the rare talent of being able to enter that virtual world without jacking in physically. He offers four wildly disparate story threads, each with its own protagonist, and allows them slowly to graft themselves together as organically as he can. In fact he's having fun taking his time, defying conventions of plot development. But you're never really wasting your time watching a genius at play, even when he drops the ball.įor most of the book, it seems as if Gibson is steadfastly and infuriatingly avoiding establishing a plot. In all honesty it doesn't fully work, and Mona Lisa Overdrive remains Gibson's least artistically successful story to date.

Yet it's a testament to Gibson's still fecund talents that much of its entertainment value lies in wanting to solve it. The resulting story is a hell of a mess, a convoluted literary Rubik's Cube whose sides stubbornly refuse to match up no matter how much you play with it. So he sets about here trying to push his own envelopes and cut his own edges. A direct sequel to Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive shows William Gibson perhaps a bit too self-conscious of his stature as a leading SF superstar from whom great things are now routinely expected.

Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson