Rating: 
Summary: The master works his magic
Review: Once again William Gibson creates a book that leaves one pining for more. Pattern Recognition is a novel that exemplifies his ability to provide a vision of scenes and characters that are thoroughly detailed yet without the wordiness of a David Foster Wallace. A great example of this is his description of Cayce getting dressed for her meeting. In a few quick sentences the reader comes to understand not only what Cayce is wearing but what she is all about.Some of the commercial and trade reviews that I have read have compared this book very favorably with Neuromancer and I concur that it is an extremely well thought-out and written book. But what they didn't say is that it is that it is an extremely different book. Those of you who are seeking another cyberpunk book rather than looking for good fiction written by a master are going to be left wanting. Cayce is definitely not Case and lives in a very different world.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing piece of work
Review: This is not a perfect novel -- as in a lot of the Gibson books I've read, the "big secret" is not nearly as compelling as the journey to find the "big secret," and the ending is a little pat (maybe I'm just used to him leaving more threads unresolved as in the past he's written trilogies). However, that being said, Gibson is a master at simple, yet amazingly evocative prose. You feel this one in your gut. The heroine, cast in broad strokes, is very compelling. Gibson is a master of creating paranoid narratives similar to Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49," but the heroine here is clever enough to get the metareference and comment on it as the action proceeds. Gibson dissects contemporary society, especially the dislocation a lot of us felt/still feel after 9/11 and the rabid obsession with "trendiness," in a carefully detailed and evocative manner that makes you feel like you're not only reading a compelling story but also a very precise cultural anthropology of the way a lot of us live, or feel like consumer culture is telling us we are supposed to live, now. The deliberate dissonances Gibson is able to create have me seeing the world just a bit differently. So while not a perfect book, definitely an important, thought-provoking one, worth picking up and recommending to friends if only for the discussions it will start. That is worth at least five stars. :)
Rating:
Summary: A compassionate thriller for knowledge workers
Review: Mr. Gibson, famous for his literate, noir-ish novels of world of punk-influenced hackers, leaves the future behind for the present. This is a novel of ideas and contemporary life. If you've never read Gibson, this is the place to start. If you're a long-time Gibson fan, this is a book you can share with people who've never read him. Yeah, I loved it.
Rating:
Summary: Gibson has crafted a compelling story with razor-sharp prose
Review: PATTERN RECOGNITION spins a complicated spy story filled with double crosses, dramatic rescues, power-hungry marketers, iconoclastic hackers, documentary filmmakers, industrial spies, Russian mobsters, Internet lurkers and quirky computer geeks. However, it also functions as a sharp commentary on consumerism and the calculated dissemination of pop culture. If Gibson's signature has long been his ability to incorporate cultural touchstones into futuristic works to imbue them with a sense of immediacy and relevance, then his latest work --- set only one year after September 11th and saturated with familiar brand names like Google and Pilates --- acknowledges and parodies our willingness to be manipulated by advertising. The story centers on Cayce Pollard, a "coolhunter" with an uncanny knack for understanding logos and identifying trends before the public at large recognizes them. In an ironic twist typical of Gibson's sardonic humor, she herself is acutely allergic to brand names, harboring a violent reaction to the doughy Michelin Man, among other random trademarks. The story is framed by the events of September 11th and their personal relevance to Cayce: Her father, Win Pollard, rode in a cab that morning and headed in the direction of the World Trade Center only to disappear without a trace. The mystery surrounding his disappearance maintains a tenuous connection with the plot until the novel's end, when her father's past and Cayce's present converge in unlikely but poignant circumstances. Cayce is also part of an online community that strives to find meaning and patterns in a series of video clips anonymously uploaded to the web. Her personal interest and work collide when a marketing consultant --- who recognizes the genius in how the clips (simply referred to as the "footage") has garnered a global audience with fervent brand loyalty --- hires her to track down who's behind it. But when someone hacks into her personal computer and starts following her, Cayce realizes this isn't a typical freelance gig. The investigations have Cayce jet setting between London, Moscow and Tokyo. Gibson manages to make the contemporary setting at once realistic and fantastical, imbuing the novel with a surreal quality reminiscent of Neal Stephenson, Hitchcock and even Blade Runner. The plot itself --- with a series of impossible coincidences, chance meetings and pure luck --- doesn't stand a chance under careful examination, but somehow the disparate elements dovetail so perfectly at the end that it doesn't matter. Gibson manages to make the impossible plausible and delightfully satisfying. His first novel set in the present-day seems bent on acknowledging that today's world is as contradictory and oddball as any futuristic, sci-fi alter-universe. Besides crafting a compelling story, Gibson's razor-sharp prose is as precise as ever, even when describing something as commonplace as jet lag: "[Cayce's] mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical cord down the vanished wake of the plane." Gibson's newest work is evocative of the current zeitgeist: unrelentingly realistic and cautiously optimistic. --- Reviewed by Jen Robbins
Rating: 
Summary: BORING!
Review: I read 100 pages & I'm kicking myself for having wasted that much time. Characterization was never Gibson's strongest point, but these characters aren't just one-dimensional, they're NO-dimensional. The heroine is determinedly anti-fashion and is allergic to certain trademarks....believe me, you won't care. Her name is Cayce Pollard so her clothes are CPUs--Casey Pollard Units. This is what passes for wit. The book contains one of the most annoying mannerisms I've encountered in years: In the first chapter, the American heroine, waking up in London, notices that electrical outlets are different, the English drive on the other side of the road, etc., so she dubs England "mirror-world". From then on, any reference to an English object or custom is accompanied by the adjective "mirror-world". It wasn't especially clever the first time, and it is maddening after 50 repititions. Gibson needs to find some fresh ideas, his last three books have been awful.
Rating:
Summary: Riveting...but a little hokey
Review: The storyline is a whirlwind that takes you through London, Japan, the U.S., and Russia, depicting the current state of technology while trying to unravel a global mystery about a film whose maker is unknown. The main character, Cayce, is really well developed as a woman, who has a knack for recognizing the patterns of fashion and trend. I was riveted with the action packed and high speed techono driven world that Cayce is working in but I found parts of the story to be hokey and rushed. The way Gibson solves the mystery of the film by using "the echelon" a mysterious group who knows all online secrets and the slipshod romance at the end is a little too generic and takes away from the novel. In addition, the way Gibson throws out brands and consistent mention of the ibook that Cayce uses gives the novel the feel of a giant advertisement. Overall, it's highly readable, it's not great literature, but for the sci-fiction genre it has a number of great insights. Plus, "the duck in your face at 250 knots" (you'll find out what this means) is quite funny.
Rating:
Summary: Gibson's Masterpiece
Review: What can be added to the dozens of great reviews that have already popped up in every major newspaper [From the NY Times to the LA Times] and Magazine [From Wired to the New Yorker]?
Not much--except this. William Gibson continues to surprise and amaze the reader. Sit down with Pattern Recognition, and you will not look at your own world the same way again. What is it about? Mysterious footage on the internet? How we are marketed and targeted by corporations? Yes, and lots more. Read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Pattern Recognition
Review: There's a lot to like about this modern (not SF, despite my local library classifying it that way) thriller. Gibson writes beautifully, and evokes the world -- this time the sometimes silly politics of mailing lists and chat rooms -- with great insight. His protagonist, Cayce (and why is she essentially named Case? I could never figure that out) is vivid and interesting. On the other hand, the book takes a *really* long time to get going -- I mean about page 150 -- and at some points I felt like there really wasn't quite enough plot there to support the tense mood and the number of characters (at least three of whom I couldn't see a real purpose for). Without wanting to give spoilers since this is such a new book, it's about mysterious footage that appears on the Internet, and the various people--from magnates to otaku--who become obsessed with finding out who's creating the footage, why, and what it means. And the answer is a gorgeous one. But do I believe in the amount of danger and tension surrounding the answer? I'm not sure. On some level, I felt like this was a "thriller" pushing really, really hard to be a literary journey of self-discovery. There's nothing in the least wrong with that--but it was the thriller trappings that at times did not quite work for me.
Rating:
Summary: best since neuromancer
Review: Gibson seems, at long last, to be getting older. This new novel doesn't always have the frenetic pace of the Neuromancer books, but in "Pattern Recognition" he has rediscovered the writing style that made his first book so damn good. As always, it is his little insights into culture and to the ways we relate to our technology that makes this book work. Might have liked to see the anti-materialism/anti-brand name/anti-commodification sentiments reconciled with the 9/11 American experience. Both of these figure heavily in the book, but are largely treated as two separate issues. And maybe they are... Point is, Gibson gets you thinking and looking DIFFERENTLY at the world around us. And he throws in some useful slang: "Lombard" and "MAWG" to name two. Wondering if Bill G. is seeing himself as the MAWG -- a little midlife crisis creeping in perhaps. Read it if you like Gibson and were a lil disappointed with everything he's put out since that first one in 1984.
Rating:
Summary: A stylish masterpiece
Review: Gibson pulls off a novel set in a very real, post 9/11 present. All his usual trademark obsessions (the web, Tokyo, otaku...) are there, as is his style, baroque into elegance (a fridge smells of "long-chain monomers"), and a touch of humor (the pomo theorists' passage is hilarious, for example). This is not sci-fi, only in the sense that our present has caught up with the future, but otherwise this reads as breathlessly as Neuromancer, minus the jacking in, here replaced by checking one's e-mail. The extended meditations on jet lag and related sleep deprivation are someof the best writing on sleep this side of Proust. While the ending feels a bit contrieved (I cannot explain why without spoilers) I would definitely rank this novel as one of his best work.
| 
