Rating: 
Summary: Gibson writes in the present
Review: Unlike his famous Neuromancer, Pattern Recognition is set in the here-and-now. September 11 has happened. Cayce Pollard, the protagonist, lost her father that day in that very city, but no body was ever found. She works as a freelance coolhunter who's allergic to logos.The story revolves round finding the creator of video clips that has achieved cult status on the Internet. An ad exec considers this "footage" to be the greatest marketing idea of the young 21st Century and hires Cayce to find the maker. Her hunt takes her from London, to Tokyo, back to London, then to Russia. Gibson paces the story well. If he wanted to he could get bogged down in the intricacies of steganography, viral marketing, or signal intelligence. He doesn't. Instead, we follow Cayce running into interesting characters who's lives all revolve around late 20th. Century technology. There are references to old calculators and old computers, and there's the Net itself playing a supporting role without any lines. The global linking of computers, digital devices, and minds allows the story to even exist. The footage first appeared on the Net. That's where obsessive fans analyze every pixel on message boards. We read Cayce's e-mails to friends, business partners, and her mother. PR isn't an action-filled novel. There is a small fight and chase through Tokyo. What drives the story is the intrigue: who's really working for who? what are someone's motives? what is the purpose of the footage? These questions do get answered. What Gibson also addresses is the role of Media in our lives. It permeates our every waking moment, whether we know it or know. We're not just passive, only consuming, we also produce media by how we communicate with others to how we wear our clothes. The constant questioning of the Man/Media relationship threads itself throughout. A problem with Gibson's books are they get dated quickly. Neuromancer founded the cyberpunk genre, but I laugh reading his guess of a vast global network far into the future (we're already there). The same thing will happened with PR. There are just too many references that fit perfectly in 2003, but will get stale in a few years (characters "Google" each other). Fun, yes, but not timeless.
Rating: 
Summary: Must read, great introduction to Gibson's writing style
Review: This was my first read of William Gibson's work and I must say it was fun. His writing style is very enjoyable and the contemporary ideas he explores are very appealing. A possible reason is my own dislike of labels like Tommy Hilfiger, though not to the extent of sanding them off or having convulsions at the sight of the Michelin Man. The protagonist in the novel was recently compared by the New York Times to Steve Jobs. I am looking forward to reading his other works.
Rating: 
Summary: Gibson's best since Neuromancer
Review: I read this book and was truly pleased. Throughout the years I have read all of Gibson's work and while all are enjoyable, none of them quite stood up to the first. Pattern Recognition comes close. Even though it is set in the present day, all the qualities that made Neuromancer so great are there: good characters, excellent prose, and a unique insight into our technology and culture. The fact that it also dealt with 9/11 lent it a poignancy that I think will stand. Gibson finally lived up to himself, and the wait was worth it. One note: I found it funny and slightly interesting that the main character was once again named Case (spelled differently but pronounced the same).
Rating:
Summary: Great Book, intriguing as Gibson always is
Review: I enjoyed Pattern Recognition nearly as thoroughly as I enjoyed Neuromancer - a good read, enjoyable down to the very last twist.
Rating:
Summary: A probing look at our present society
Review: I decided to read "Pattern Recognition" after I thoroughly enjoyed reading "Conquest of Paradise: An End-Times Nano-Thriller", another novel based on nanotechnology. That book totally blew me away, and I heard William Gibson was the type of author that focused on future technologies and societies. Like "Conquest of Paradise", "Pattern Recognition" is set in the present. The heroine is a fast-living edge of society figure named Cayce Pollard. Pollard is among a group of Internet junkies who strive to find meaningful patterns within a mysterious collection of video moments, merely called "the footage," and let loose onto the Internet by an unknown source. At first, Cayce only follows the footage as a hobby, but when a client hires her to track down the true source, her life becomes intertwined with this obsession. The novel is rife with pertinent observations of modern day society and focuses on some of the more hollow and meaningless aspects of our consumer driven culture. A great book. For those who enjoy the intellectually challenging ideas and candid observations of our present society, "Pattern Recognition" is a good read. I highly recommend "Conquest of Paradise" as supplemental entertainment. Although different in many ways, the two books are quite thought provoking.
Rating:
Summary: William Gibson Arrives in the 21st Century
Review: Starting with his "Sprawl" sequence--Mona Lisa Overdrive, Neuromancer et. al--and continuing through his "Berry Rydel" series--Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tommorow's Parties-- William Gibson has been moving back in time and forward into our future, zeroing in on the milieu that is our high technological age. His books are not so much about some imaginary future as about the effects of technology on culture and people. With "Pattern Recogniton" he has arrived right on our 21st Century, post-911 doorstep with a compelling and well written mystery. And no one that I can think of could pull it off better--not even his cloest competitor, Neal Stephenson. This is not, strictly speaking a science fiction novel but more an example of how, every day, the line between SF and reality blurs. A must read for fans of William Gibson. I can't wait to see where he goes from her.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing, Count Zero Lite ...
Review: Basically the same story as Count Zero, but done in a much slicker and less interesting way. The writing is all very slick and edgy as we've come to expect from Gibson. At one point, he describes a set of keys as looking like something you'd get if you "disassembled a very modern automatic pistol." There's also an enormous number of brand-names in the text, which is appropriate to a degree since this has to do with some of the central themes of the book. However, it eventually becomes heavy-handed and annoying after 340 pages. Really, how many times can you use "Google" as a verb and expect the reader to ooh and ahh at your hipness. The big killer is that the plot is horrid. First off, it is basically a rehash of the plot from Count Zero, minus the interesting Turner/Angie thread. Artist-woman gets hired by big, powerful person/corporation to find the maker of strange art objects. She gets an uber expense account and is constantly followed by multiple groups of people. She tries to dart off and find the maker herself. *** SPOILER WARNING *** Many of the sub-plots are never resolved or simply dropped. Cayce's love interest, Boone Chu, is introduced mid-novel and just disappears near the end, with only a cursory explanation of what happened to him. Her mother's EVP thread comes to nothing. The whereabouts of her father, a seemingly central sub-plot, are never revealed and much about him is left unanswered. Damien's dig documetary amounts to nothing, and contributes nothing but "cool" to the story. Other sub-plots are too neatly and quickly resolved in the very last few pages. Who cares if Judy gets a job with Blue Ant? Or that Cayce falls for Parkaboy? Also, in thinking about the plot, all major progress towards finding the maker of the footage is made via deus ex machina plot devices. Cayce barely has to lift a finger for the maker to drop in her lap. Taki just gives her the embeded number map. There is never any explanation of how the Mystic group in Japan got this. It just appears. Then Marly ... oops, I mean Cayce just hands this to Baranov and he magically gives her an email address of the maker. Lame. Worse yet, Gibson flatly refuses to describe how Baranov went from a T-shaped block of numbers to an email address, stating that "she will never know" how it was done. Basically telling the reader to just quit worrying about it, since he isn't going to resolve this mystery. What a cop-out. *** END SPOILER WARNING ***
Also, annoyingly, some of the minor locations details are incorrect. Japanese phone users answer the phone with "mushi mushi," rather than the more common Romanization "moshi moshi." A Japanese office worker "inkjets" (ooh, he used "inkjet" as a verb, wow, gee, Gibson's so hip ...) a photo onto an "eight by eleven." Unfortunately for Gibson, they use A4 sized paper in Japan. Some of the language is nice and some notions and descriptions are classic Gibson chic, but the story itself is poorly plotted and the characters are thinly drawn. As an exercise in how cool can you sound when describing jetlag, the book succeeds. As a compelling story, it fails miserably.
Rating: 
Summary: What's the point?
Review: I went into this book with high expectations. The friend who gave it to me said it was just amazing and he thought I would just love it because of my marketing background. Well...it didn't live up to my expectations and I am beginning to wonder if my friends know me at all! First of all I think Gibson's writing style is definitely unique in the literary world, but it certainly isn't new in the blogging arena. His first person present perspective is an interesting approach and it seems to justify the almost stream of consciousness writing style. It certainly lends nicely to the overarching theme of the tech generation (yes, cliché, but I can't think of a better phrase), but...the halting stream of thought and the often times esoteric references make the reader pause long enough to dwell on the flaws in the story. Just because the unedited, fragmentary blog-language is a popular way of communicating does it make it "good writing"? I am a quick reader, but this book took me much longer to read than a book of equal size because I found it so difficult to get over these linguistic humps. I had to really stop and try to decipher his meanings more than once. Some of them never resolved. Some of his sentences are simple fragments with no bearing. It's as if they were just dropped out of space and given no real place to go. On one hand that can be creative, on the other, a serious hindrance to a good story. It's very exclusive feeling...is that what he was attempting to get across? It's entirely possible that Gibson has created, or utilized, a new expression of art with his writing style that I am completely barbarian minded to...I am not sure what to make of that thought. Also, I would like the plot to have been a little more exciting and believable. The book seemed to have so many parallel themes running simultaneously that it's difficult to say what it was truly about or if there was even a main point. If you want to think of it as a masterpiece of postmodern thought, then you are free to make that assertion. I think it more random than anything. For example, at the beginning we are given the seminal plot structure surrounding this pattern recognition gifting and the fragments of footage on the net.(Regarding the pattern recognition: in reality, fundamentally unrelated to the trademark phobia, but Gibson doesn't make this distinction and possibly doesn't believe that there is one and just lumps everything he personally deems unexplainable into the suggestion of "paranormal"). This was the beginning of what could have been something really exciting and interesting steeped in mystery, but it seemed, in the end, to become very watered down with tons of other seeminly unrelated baggage, steeped in cliché (Russian mafia??????) and anticlimactic. The many, many references to pop culture and name brands was also a difficulty for those of us who are not quite so "conscious." I think it could have been weaved into the plot line just a little more delicately. In summary: I found myself with the urge to consume large quantities of Portobello mushrooms while drinking Starbucks coffee, and if I ever thought about wearing Tommy Hilfiger clothing I am certain now that it is completely derivative and "un-cool." And where can I get a Rickson's???? Heeeeeyyyyy now, could this just be a marketing scheme????
Rating:
Summary: the patterns of marketing and image
Review: Gibson takes us on a relatively sedate (for Gibson, anyway) tour of marketing and image. His main character, Cayce Pollard, is a 'cool-hunter'. She has an exquisite sense of what will sell and (more importantly) what won't. For all of her talent, she cannot handle strong marketing images, and has a severe reaction if exposed to some of the more obnoxious forms of marketing. Outside of her work, Cayce is drawn to 'the footage': mysterious bits of a film that make their way to the Internet. The footage is endlessly discussed on an Internet forum, as people deconstruct the existing pieces and hope to find more pieces. Cayce is hired to determine who is actually behind the footage. A powerful executive is interested in the footage for the branding and marketing that it has developed. It is well-known, but its popularity is purely from word-of-mouth. It has hundreds of fervent followers, all hoping to figure out what is the message behind the footage. The executive reasons that there must be something to be mined here, some way to make more money. Cayce sets off on a journey to unravel the mystery. She does unravel the mystery, travelling through Europe, Japan, and Russia to track it down. The creation of the footage turns out to be a mysterious, almost mystical process (which I won't spoil here). The book is well-written and moves along briskly. I wasn't entirely satisfied with the resolution of the mystery; it just seems a bit too far out there to be believable. I did not like the last few pages of the book, which read like an epilogue to show the reader that everything worked out perfectly fine. The ending, especially the last few pages, keep me from giving this book a fifth star. It's a good book, but not a great one.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping and satisfying
Review: Gibson is back with a compelling read that provokes, entertains and enlightens. Gibson understands modern culture in unique way and brings you along.
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