Paperback, 304 pages
Published Aug. 27, 1996 by Viking.
This felt like he just took the outline of Virtual Light and rewrote it with a different cast. That might have been fine if I'd read it years after, but I just read VL the day before, so it was annoying. I also didn't find the environments in this one to be as clear or well-described. I loved it up until Chia gets to the restaurant/flat, but then it lost its intensity for me.
I was a big fan of Gibson’s virtual light so thought I’d give the second book in the series a go and it was a huge disappointment. It is like a completely different person has written it, Gibson’s voice in virtual light was fantastic, a really gritty noir style whereas this feels like a cheap imitation. It’s tough to give this a low rating because the idea is there, social media has almost a life of it’s own, big companies are able to mine your data to find out what you plan to do and probably know more about you than you do, and a rock star has taken things a step further and plans to marry a being that only exists in virtual reality. Ya see, it does sound interesting and I’m impressed that Gibson came up with this in 1996 and it all feels pretty accurate.
So the …
I was a big fan of Gibson’s virtual light so thought I’d give the second book in the series a go and it was a huge disappointment. It is like a completely different person has written it, Gibson’s voice in virtual light was fantastic, a really gritty noir style whereas this feels like a cheap imitation. It’s tough to give this a low rating because the idea is there, social media has almost a life of it’s own, big companies are able to mine your data to find out what you plan to do and probably know more about you than you do, and a rock star has taken things a step further and plans to marry a being that only exists in virtual reality. Ya see, it does sound interesting and I’m impressed that Gibson came up with this in 1996 and it all feels pretty accurate.
So the concept is good, it’s just let down by the book. Laney is dull and I struggled to see what he brought to the story, a bit like Indiana Jones and that film where they open the melty-face-ark, the outcome wasn’t influenced by Laney and would be the same if he wasn’t there. Chai is a more interesting character but is very young and Gibson didn’t do much with her. Then we have my biggest issue, a human is marrying a virtual reality character, there could have been so much done with this, does she really exist, does she have the right to marry, does she has other rights, could they have kids virtual/real? It felt like a missed opportunity. Gibson does a good job again of predicting future technology and then he gets something wrong which makes me chuckle, still using faxes in the future.
An interesting idea for a story but it falls flat in the end, maybe it was written before it’s time or maybe it is just me being grumpy. I still recommend reading virtual light but would give this one a miss.
Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2022/02/01/idoru-by-william-gibson/
