Book Review: The Peripheral by William Gibson
So, I received The Agency, the second book of this series, via Net Galley and noted that reviewers mentioned it would be best to read The Peripheral beforehand for things to make sense. Well… I’m afraid I might be in trouble because nothing made sense for me in The Peripheral.
I had no idea who was who, let alone what they were doing. (Or when or where really.) Okay, I’ll concede it might have been that I was listening via audible and maybe it would have been beneficial if I had been able to see the various character names written etc etc so I wouldn’t have been so lost. But…
There’s a gamer girl who lives in some country hick town in the middle of nowhere whose ex-military (and maybe criminal?) brother sets her up to play some game on her phone (swatting bugs from a building, I think, I don’t know, I was easily distracted around this time). And, despite the extraordinary amount of money she’s being paid, gamer!girl is shocked to think that maybe she’s stumbled into more than a game. There’s an acting agent (?) minder type guy who is trying to control some actress who has stuffed things up by getting tattoos when she shouldn’t have gotten tattoos (wtf). Suddenly he’s having drinks with a woman who has taken over someone else’s body (a’la Lock In) and there’s some conspiracy time travel thing going on. I think. IDEK.
The technobabble. OMG, the technobabble. Again, I’ll say maybe this would have been easier if I’d been able to see the jargon and get it straight in my head. Instead I drifted off and did the audible equivalent of skimming — concentrating on traffic.
So, about a quarter of the way in I figured there’s a million other books I could be reading, probably a million that fall into the scifi virtual reality category for starters, and took full advantage of my audible get-out-of-jail-free card and hit that return button.
I’m a bit worried about the sequel now… Mmm…
Can only give 1 out of 5 for anything that is a DNF.
readwritewish 