Mona Lisa Overdrive

The ending of Mona Lisa Overdrive is an artful act of Perfect Symmetry bringing the books of The Sprawl Trilogy, (Neuromancer, Count Zero & Mona Lisa Overdrive) full circle to an untying of the individual knots & a possibility that is radically brilliant. Maybe somewhere on humanity’s terra firma there’s an entity, AI or other, that’s already made contact with a ghost in some other else’s machines.

The most interesting thing about William Gibson, The Godfather Of Cyberpunk, is how blessedly, bizarrely attached to protecting the innocents and rewarding his heroes he is. Under all the cybersleaze and drugs and corruption beats a strong ethical center - once you accept that his White Knights are cheerfully amoral hitwomen and ruthless criminals/businessmen, and his innocents are low-level junkie hookers and petty thieves.In this novel, the third in his openly-SF SPRAWL Trilogy, the lives of female "Simstim" (a kind of cross between VR Programs and music videos) star Angela with an at first confusing relationship to both Voodoo and the "Matrix" (Gibson's version of the Wild West Internet), the aforementioned junkie hooker Mona who bears some resemblance to Angela (and is later given plastic surgery to resemble her closely), a guy in seeming suspended animation attached to a supercomputer (the "Count"), Yakuza Goddaughter Kumiko sent to England to keep her safe during an apparent turf war that becomes a global conflagration, and Super-Buttkicking Hitwoman/"Businesswoman" Sally Shears (who later turns out to be another identity of "Mona Millions" from the classic NEUROMANCER) all end up intertwining with the lives of various down&outers in The Sprawl. A vast, elaborate blackmail/kidnapping plot, with multiple murders to grease the wheels, is bringing them all together - only those who set the plot in motion never planned for the cogs to meet up and/or turn things around in their own ways!You'll spend at least half the novel utterly confused and gasping for relevance - but in the back half a great deal becomes clearer, even if the ending will leave you somewhat confused by what happened and why, exactly. In that way it's like most of Gibson's work - fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. If you have a taste for what Gibson's cooking, you'll rate this novel higher than I did - if not, you'll wonder WTF I gave it four stars for.

Book came wrapped in easily removable plastic and in a tight, snug bubble envelope. Wasn’t bent at the corners of the hardcover and with no damage to the jacket. No missing, torn, or dog-eared pages either. All in all a pristine new copy of a classic cyberpunk novel by a revered author. Good first impression from a small business!

Mona Lisa Overdrive is another great work of William Gibson amongst his many other SF books. The characters, plot, setting all mix together in creating a great book to read.

William Gibson's "Mona Lisa Overdrive" is a decent ending to the Sprawl Trilogy he started with Neuromancer. Gibson makes a good attempt at keeping these books separate enough that a reader might be able to read them independently (there's a lot of in-book time between the events in each book, knowledge of returning characters isn't necessary to understand what's going on, and the summaries of previous events are detailed enough to let readers know where things are coming from). But, though it's possible to read the books out of order, I wouldn't recommend it. You'd still miss a lot.In general, "Mona Lisa Overdrive" reads pretty much like the previous two books: a well-written, interesting story with well-done characters and worlds. Even though I rate this book at a Very Good 4 stars out of 5, I'd also say that it's not quite as good as the previous book (which was similarly not quite as good as the original). Probably the biggest issue is that this book's pacing is just a bit off. First, he's running four sets of intertwined plot lines here. So, it takes a while to get things together and rolling. Also, he throws in a bit more of the artsy prose that successful authors seem to want to write instead of meat-and-potatoes stories. For instance, he's got one chapter dedicated to extolling the virtues of the production techniques used in a documentary a character is watching. But, those are fairly minor issues. Overall, it's a very good continuation (and conclusion) of the series.The books in Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy are:1. Neuromancer2. Count Zero3. Mona Lisa Overdrive