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Pattern Recognition

Berkley

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Average customer rating: 3.5 stars

Pattern Recognition, great book

In general I like good sci fi that's fairly thoughtful. This Gibson is not his typical sci fi, but it's a great mystery/thriller with sci fi elements. The main character is one of the best written characters I've read in quite a while. And it's very current. It has some of the best commentary on 9/11 that I've ever read. And I believe the first time I've seen 9/11 incorporated into fiction.

Good book. It was one of those that I looked forward to reading every night and often stayed up too late finishing just one more chapter.

C'est tout.

Don't waste your time

I made it through two chapters and gave up. I am an avid reader and read 30-40 thrillers a year, but this one was unreadable. If you like authors who use 15 words (many of them invented) when three will do, read on. For me, it wasn't worth the effort.

A solid, if slow read.

Since you can read a synopsis of the novel in the Amazon description above, I won't bore you with that. The only other Gibson book I've read is Neuromancer and it's interesting to find parallels. (I started Idoru and didn't like it much)

It's impossible to not mention that both novels' main characters are named Case. While Cayce Pollard's name is spelled differently, Gibson goes out of his way to point out that Cayce pronounces her name "Case" and not "Casey". Both characters are emotionally alienated and bizarre, and I constantly found myself drawing parallels between the two.

However, while Neuromancer is a cyberpunk techno-thriller, Pattern Recognition is a larger, slower novel that explores our post-9/11 world. It is naturally a more unwieldly beast beast. So don't walk into PR expecting Neuromancer speed plotting. Pattern Recognition never really picks up speed - rather it feels like you (and Cayce) are watching over someone else's shoulder. Cayce herself often seems like she's wandering through someone else's life, and as a result, I was never deeply engaged.

The ending was a little bit too clean for me, and I prefer things that leave things a little messier, a little more open-ended. The resolution was a tad too pat. But still somewhat satisfying.

Pattern Recognition is kind of like trying a new dish at your favorite restaurant. You can identify the maker, and it's familiar enough to be enjoyable, but it's not quite the same as your old favorite dish. Still worth trying though, if only to say you did.

Excellent and Multifaceted Story

You walk with the protagonist as she tries to figure out who her mysterious employer is and what her real assignment might be; you are variously helped and threatened--sometimes by the same people--and things are rarely only what they appear to be.

More than that, this young woman has a personality, some history, and definite "emotional baggage"--this last prominently figuring in one of the most moving 9/11 commentaries I have read (and totally unexpected, though utterly appropriate, in this book).

I regard this as a mystery novel, though it is written in the science-fiction genre. I thoroughly enjoyed the story as it was carried along by Gibson's fluent and fluid writing. Excellent work, moving and ingenious.

Well written and engrossing, but left me disappointed at the end

Gibson has a sharp eye for hipster culture; that gets a through work out in Pattern Recognition. His penchant for vivid descriptions of the places were the latest opinion makers hang out is a key part of this book too. Cayce Pollard, the main character has an allergy to brands, or at least fashion brands, it is referenced frequently. It is key to the particular talent that the main character has. She is a "cool-hunter" or trend spotter, so her sensitivity to brands is important. Gibson devotes a lot of time to brands and Cayce's reactions to them. In the end the story does not revolve around products but a mysterious movie being released on the Internet in fragments, with out any attribution.

The story is how Cayce hunts down the origin of those fragments. We learn who was behind the mysterious movies and we learn why they were released. However the effort put into the distribution and the convoluted way Cayce was brought into it does not really add up. I still don't know why anyone cares about the movie fragments. Much of the story is left unresolved, or if it was resolved I could not follow it.

The business that hires Cayce to find the fragments is a sort of mysterious distributed business. Though what their real role is, and the role of the Russian mafia who appear at the end is not really cleared up.

In the end Cayce makes peace with family, but that is hardly related to the story. Gibson provides vivid descriptions of brands and styles and their role as tribal markings. In the end I was left disappointed, I am not sure what Gibson was getting at.