All Tomorrow's Parties

Rating:
Summary: Typical Gibson deep atmosphere with lame ending
Review: I've read evrything by Gibson. This is basically a sequel to "Idoru" and "Virtual Light" except he dosen't bring much new to the party. I love his writing - chewing over each brilliant sentence, his lush atmosphere and weird characters. This time he's gone a bit toward the dark side with more gruesome murder and gore. He also reveals his penchant for antique watch collecting, but to no purpose - other than character background. As usual he dissapoints at the end. The whole book points to a specific ending turning around the so called "nodal point" -- then there's no payoff at all! Frustrating. Perhaps the next sequel will be the payoff, it's what keeps me coming back.

Rating:
Summary: Once again the man does it.
Review: I started reading Heinlein when I was seven. Sure, they were his juvie books but in '61 that's what he was writing. I got to appreciate superb writing. They only people who deliver that to me today with the same consistancy are Gibson and Bruce Sterling. I could live in thier worlds. I probably make my world a bit like thiers when I can. If you are a Gibson fan, "Parties" will not let you down. It will bring you up. If you aren't familiar with his work you will search out what came before it. He moralizes as much as Heinlein. It's the morality of another time but it still honors the moment.

Rating:
Summary: A disappointing retread of old Gibson ideas
Review: All Tomorrow's Parties reads like a poor amalgam of Virtual Light and Idoru. Several scenes of Parties mirror similar scenes from Gibson's previous work, and it's possible to imagine Gibson sitting down with discarded notes from Virtual Light and Idoru to crank out Parties. Worse yet, Gibson seems bored with the characters he reprises. It shows in his inability to have them do anything interesting other than act confused and make references back to the better books in which they first appeared. While the confusion of his characters worked in other novels, here it merely highlights the lack of cohesiveness in characterization, plot, theme, and even tone. Nothing is very smooth in Parties, and I must wonder if Gibson's finally out of magic.

Rating:
Summary: Gibson's best work in a long time
Review: All Tomorrow's Parties is easily the best in the trilogy that began with Virtual Light. The quality of the prose Gibson writes makes this book a pleasure to read. The excellent pacing of the book makes it hard for the reader to put down. The use of short chapters makes keeping up with the diverse population of characters easy. While it may not surmount Neuromancer, All Tomorrow's parties is certainly worth picking up.

Rating:
Summary: A new book, but with a walk down memory lane feel to it
Review: The feel of All Tommorrow's Parties is less edgy than Virtual Light, but that's ok because The City(San Francisco) is less edgy in real life now than when Virtual Light was published. William Gibson has my thanks for returning his attention back to Chevette Washington and Berry Rydell(from Virtual Light), Colin Laney and Rei Toei (Idoru) and for his new characters: especially Silencio, Konrad and Boomzilla. The characters are familiar, the city and bridge are familliar, but the pushing hand behind the scenes is different...as if the real feel of San Francisco, which has mellowed and aged since Virtual Light, has affected the writing of Parties, that this novel is more societial criticism than near future dreaming.....either way, it works. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Rating:
Summary: BRILLIANT end to Gibson's cyberspace trilogy
Review: I expected a LOT from All Tomorrow's Parties, and I received far more than I expected. This is easily Gibson's funniest novel ever, and an amazingly beautiful change from his usual convoluted societal writing style. The characters reintroduced here take on whole new dimensions that they lacked in the previous novels, and at the same time this book opens up the reader's eyes as to how the worlds being described in the trilogy can clash when they meet each other.

Rating:
Summary: Running out of steam
Review: William Gibson's writing has been on a slow downward trend for several years. His books prior to Virtual Light were brilliant. Burning Chrome is still one of my favorite short story collections.

After Idoru, I have not found his stories very interesting. There seems to be far less meat to the story, and very little payoff. And each book is a continuation of the characters in prior novels.

Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly enjoyable
Review: Gibson is one of those authors who started out strong and just keeps getting better. I'm not going to claim that I understood every last thing in this complex story about a near-future society where virtual reality is commonplace and a society of squatters lives on the Golden Gate Bridge, but I did thoroughly enjoy every word. In his trademark sparse prose, Gibson has created an entirely believable world, a cast of characters who are vivid and real despite their strange surroundings, a storyline that is both satisfyingly complex and yet exciting enough to sweep you along toward an explosive but rather ambiguous ending (I like the ambiguity). Like the intricacies of the plot, the book is impossible to describe in a few sentences -- you have to experience it yourself.

Rating:
Summary: Not much of a story really and a little too weird
Review: I'll give it two stars only because, as a reveiwer's quote from the cover says, he's a great "stylist." I used to be a huge Gibson fan, but this book left me completely cold. The story lines are pointless, characters poorly developed, and the conclusion is a big yawn.

Don't waste your money on this one.

Rating:
Summary: Like Pulp Fiction...only post apocalyptic, with computers...
Review: I had to read this book twice, the first time through, the first 100 pages or so were a little slow. The stories were just a little to spaced apart for me, and having only read Neuromancer, the characters seemed to rapidly introduced. The last half of the book, however, moved so rapidly, and combined all of the seemingly disjointed storylines from the first half into a smooth flowing mind blowing cataclysmic conclusion. Wow. The second time I read the book, which was after reading Idoru, and Virtual Light, (the other two books in the Rydell/Chevette/Colin Laney/Yamazaki/The Bridge saga) I was absolutely floored. This confirmed my hypothesis, Gibson is a Genious, and his works should be on everyone's shelves, regardless of their degree of technophilia.