4 stars
First Sentence: The ghost was her father’s parting gift, presented by a black-clad secretary in a departure lounge at Narita.
Thoughts: After the confusing morass that was Count Zero Gibson refinds his footing with Mona Lisa Overdrive, a fitting conclusion to the Sprawl trilogy. All our old favorites are back for one last hurrah. Except that one guy. He got married and has four kids now. Good for That One Guy.
Angie Mitchell is now a Sense/Net star. Like 90% of celebrities in the 1980s she’s recently out of rehab for drug addiction and is coming to terms with life without the loas. Then one contacts her out of nowhere to warn her that someone is out to get her. Someone she knows, but who? [ominous chord, crack of thunder, manaical laughter]
Meanwhile, in Dog Solitude, Slick Henry finds himself with a comatose man on his hands. The local underworld boss Kid Afrika wants Henry to keep this man and his nurse, Cherry, hidden in The Factory for a few weeks. Henry agrees, but he knows that there’s going to be trouble when The Factory Owner, Gentry, finds out. He’s not wrong.
Back in the first sentence, Kumiko has been sent to London by her father, the head of the Yakuza, to keep her out of the way in the upcoming underworld war. She’s not sure how she feels about this so she consults the ghost her father gave her. The ghost is a holographic simulation of an English boy that calls itself Colin. It advises Kumiko to keep her eyes and ears open, which she does. She realizes the only person who cares at all about her is the weird silver-eyed woman named Sally, a fighter with shady friends….wait. Is it? Can it be? Yes! It’s Molly! Hey, Molly! Great to see you again. Whose ass are you going to kick this time?*
Meanwhile Mona hates living in Florida because she’s a person with her head screwed on straight.** Her boyfriend/pimp Eddy is getting her out, though. Not because he has any strong feelings about America’s Wang, he just has a new job for Mona. But first, a little plastic surgery. See, Mona looks like Angie Mitchell, but she doesn’t look enough like her. Mona is excited because she loves Angie’s Sense/Net programs but she isn’t sure she wants to look exactly like her.
While all this is going on in the physical world, things are shaking up in the Matrix as well. The AI of Neuromancer created the loas of Count Zero and now they’re about to join with a third cyberpresence to create something new. And it all hinges on Angie. But first she has to find out where Bobby’s hiding himself these days so she can get into the Matrix with him before it all goes (more) haywire (than it already has).
*Everyone’s.
**Florida has too many bugs. And humidity. And gators. And Florida People.
The Eclectic Reviewer 