Oddly, the hardcover of this was cheaper than the paperback.

My mother thought I'd like this one. She was right. Gibson has captured a certain feel of the early 21st century and put it on paper. The plot follows a "coolhunter" named Cayce (pronounced like the very different protagonist of another Gibson novel...) whose talent is being able to tell marketers whether a new branding concept will be effective. In her free time, she's been obsessing over mysterious videos that have been distributed on the Internet. Gibson nails a lot of details. He's at least as good a "coolhunter" as Cayce, and he works the theme of recognizing patterns (of cool and of other types) into the novel in an amusing variety of ways.

A lot of this book is about traveling. Normally, lots of travel in a book really annoys me (Bungee ruined much of the fantasy genre for me by pointing out that they're books about walking. Or perhaps saved me from it.), but Gibson actually talks about the travel, rather than just talking about it happening. The description of the feeling of entering a culture where you can't read the signs reminded me of some of my travels, and I liked the thread about jet lag being soul delay. I may have appreciated the travel writing more because I read the book over the course of a trip and finished it just as we landed at SFO.