Spook Country

English language

ISBN:
9780141923581

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4 stars (2 reviews)

Spook Country is a 2007 novel by speculative fiction author William Gibson. A political thriller set in contemporary North America, it followed on from the author's previous novel, Pattern Recognition (2003), and was succeeded in 2010 by Zero History, which featured much of the same core cast of characters. The plot comprises the intersecting tales of three protagonists: Hollis Henry, a musician-turned-journalist researching a story on locative art; Tito, a young Cuban-Chinese operative whose family is on occasion in the employ of a renegade ex-CIA agent; and Milgrim, a drug-addled translator held captive by Brown, a strangely authoritarian and secretive man. Themes explored include the ubiquity of locative technology, the eversion of cyberspace and the political climate of the United States in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Spook Country quickly reached mainstream North American bestseller lists and was nominated for British Science Fiction Association and Locus Awards.

7 editions

A ride

4 stars

Loved the characters. Would like to see more of them. I'm am sure I can't write a review to do it justice, but it was fascinating to me. The juxtaposition of old mainstream tech from 2006-7 with more futuristic devices, the then-time American political situation compared to today's current flavor of madness, and my own memories of playing the augmented reality real-world location-based game Ingress compared to the book's interesting locative art. I enjoyed the dry sense of humor. There was no "Womp womp" trumpet accompanying the carefully placed sentences. I look forward to diving into the third book in the series.