Rating: 
Summary: Gibson's prose returns
Review: I have been a fan of all of Gibson's books, however, I have always felt that the almost poetic descriptions used in his first book, Neuromancer, have gone by the wayside in his last several efforts. Much of this style is brought back in All Tomorrows Parties (example - a chapter entitled "Formal Absenses of Precious Things").The story itself has been adequately described in the various reviews. This book (and especailly the conclusion) does leave quite a bit more to the reader's imagination and interpretation than most of the earlier books. Although I enjoyed it thoroughly, it is definitely not intended for people who need (or merely prefer) things cleanly and neatly spelled out for them. Otherwise, buy it, read it, and hang on to your mind...
Rating: 
Summary: Had Gibson finally run dry?
Review: I first read a short story by William Gibson in OMNI magazine. It was absolutely electric! (Johnny Mnemonic, later made into an awful movie.) The characters veritably leapt to life. I've been hungry for more from this author ever since. Unfortunately, this last product fails to deliver. I wish I could be more complimentary, but the energy is just not there. Also, the characters are retreads from previous books. They're also utterly normal human beings, save for the idoru. Where are the wonderfully warped characters like the one with canine canine implants? Taking todays' technology and extrapolating it out to the future is where Mr. Gibson shines. This book promises some fundamental "nexus" but disappoints in the end. If, like me, you've got everything written by this author then you should read this just to complete your collection. On the other hand, I certainly couldn't recommend this book to someone wishing to be introduced to the cyberpunk genre. Sorry, Bill, but you missed the target this time.
Rating: 
Summary: Not his best effort
Review: Having read all of Gibson's previous books, I was prepared for another look at a not so distant and easily believable future. What I got instead was a collection of partially realized sketches and thinly fleshed out characters. Lots of atmosphere, the usual Gibson grittyness, but no real substance. Compressed and re-edited, this book would make a great first three chapters or so of a much better Gibson novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Well paced and energetic, another coup for Gibson
Review: To describe William Gibson's writing style in one word, it would probably be "energetic." Using a sharp staccato like pen, Gibson manages to construct unique and interesting scenarios. This book has all the characteristic Gibsonian qualities: distributed plot progression, characters covering both ends of the scale from cold and detached to drug crazed frenzy... it also manages to pull in a large number of characters from previous works (Virtual Light, Idoru).. Gibson's last trilogy (the Sprawl) was unique in that one never realized it was that much of a trilogy till the very end... One annoying fact of this book is that it has a classic Gibson ending.. without giving anything away let's just say it required many readings of the ending before one felt satisfied. It seems the information density per sentence increases exponentially as one reaches the last few pages. Still, the book is interesting and well worth the read..
Rating: 
Summary: Worst of Gibson's books
Review: I'm a big Gibson fan. I even liked Mona Lisa Overdrive. I loved Virtual Light and Idoru. This new book was just terribly disappointing. Unfocused, boring, pointless, blah blah. Not only do I regret buying this, I regret reading it. No action, no point, no resolution. The wrong bridge on the cover. Blah.
Rating:
Summary: Gibson's best book yet, maybe....
Review: Ignore the adoloscent losers who are stuck on Neuromancer. The fact is our cyber future is not going to be filled with one dimensional badasses who do badass things to badass people with badass computers. Cyberspace is real, and it's in the here and now, and badasses line up it alongside married housewives from Chicago who talk about Beanie Babies online. This is the real future, and Gibson is not a prophet, as so many want him to be. He's someone who finds the patterns in culture at large and uses sci fi to extend or pardoy those patterns, and this new book is the culmination of an older, wiser Gibson. I mean, what better motivation can there be in the future for a character (like Rydell) than wanting to have a steady job? That pressure is tremendous and a great deal more pertinent today for millions of people than whether or not someone can crack a dbase. As well, Gibson is in person a very funny guy, and this is his first truly hilarious book, one that actually made me laugh out loud. And this is the first William Gibson book which cannot be denied, as some scholars to do his other work, actually is about something. His prose has become sharper and more lucid than before, and with this I truly think he is becoming the Cormac McCarthy of science fiction - a down south good ol boy working in an established genre and tearing it up and down. As for complaints about the ending - well you just have to look hard enough. It does make sense, and it gave me chills. I'll give you a hint: Neal Stephenson cheated nanotech by insisting that with it would come a new social order which would displace the ramifactions of a post production culture and keep us human. Gibson remains true to the essential otherworldliness of that tech and the book does end well, with a hint of a new world to come, one that cannot be expressed in language or current imagination. Fill in the blanks for yourself, grow up, figure out that the Net is just a giant strip mall with some nice communication capabilities, and read this book. Let the otaku crowd obsess because they'll never relax enough to understand.
Rating:
Summary: Gibson must have owed someone a quick book...
Review: I read Virtual Light and loved it. I have read All Tomorrow's Parties and did not. This is a mismash of characters and strung together contrived plot devices that sound like he felt he needed to be "clever" and live up to his image. Gibson must have owed his publisher a book and here it is... You can skip this one and not miss a thing.
Rating:
Summary: Gibson's shattered holograms not what they used to be
Review: Not bad, but not Neuromancer. His abilty to depict a disjointed and hard-edged cultural distilation doesn't shine and reverberate like it did in the original books, but he's still a man alone in the genre he reiterated. I am irritated that he doesn't give credit to his musical inspirations: in Idoru he lifted one of Rez's quotes from Digital Heroes of Hyphoprisy and now he is leeching from Sisters of Mercy with his use of "this... corrosion" and "vision thing."
Rating:
Summary: Not Gibsons' best...
Review: William Gibson is, without a doubt, the most masterful writer & predictor of the day after tomorrow. That said, I must admit "All Tomorrow's Parties" is not Gibson at his peak. Again, we're on "the Bridge", the brilliantly visualized "interstitial" community from "Virtual Light". The Bridge is one of Gibson's greatest conceits (after cyberspace) & it is always a pleasure to revisit. However, the events that bring us to this place never really seem to happen or even to be everted, & the cast of characters we are visiting it with really don't have much of a reason to be involved with the story except that Gibson seems to be stuck in the dreaded SF TRILOGY mode. Either he or his publishers seem convinced that his novels have to be published in triads ("Neuromancer", "Count Zero" & "Mona Lisa Overdrive" being the Sprawl cycle & now we have "Virtual Light", "Idoru" & "All Tomorrow's Parties" as the...what?... Bridge? cycle....)Unfortunately, this mind set does Gibson a dis-service as it requires him to stretch out stories & events that were clearly completed to his satisfaction in earlier works. "All Tomorrow's Parties" is very simply, a book in search of a plot. It seems to consist primarily of short sketches that are woven together but never really go anywhere. Gibson has introduced some new elements to his writing including a character based on himself & humor but if you're not a die hard Gibsonian this will be wasted on you. Basically, if you are unfamiliar with the man's writing, don't start here! Please, read the diamond sharp writing of "Neuromancer" or "Mona Lisa Overdrive" before picking this one up.
Rating:
Summary: Sizzling, absorbing prose; OK plot
Review: The players from "Virtual Light" and "Idoru" converge on the squatter's community on San Francisco's Bay Bridge, guided by ominous signs and protents in cyberspace. Something _big_ is about to happen, and whether it's big-bad or big-ambiguous depends on who can get their hands on a certain spun aluminum cylinder with nonstandard network connections. Gibson's _writing_ is better than ever. I'm reminded of the "word wooze" of Lieber's "The Silver Eggheads": Writing so sleek that it leaves the reader reeling and dopey. The cultural and physical settings are brilliant imagined. The plot, on the other hand, is oddly familiar; there's an odd resonance between it and that of _Mona Lisa Overdrive._ In both, the world is rushing toward something trancendent; in both, a physically bottomed-out hacker is pulling strings; both have a maguffin necessary for the transcendence. They're far from _identical_ stories, but they're enough alike that one wonders if W.G. was having so much fun writing vivid and hilarious pages that he left the plot on auto. There's one _dues ex machina_ near the end that I found a bit annoying, and the very ending is ambiguous: It could be either utterly lame, or a brilliant subtle microcosm of what the world has become. In any case: A keeper, and a must if you liked the other books in the sequence.
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