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Virtual Light

Virtual Light

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.19
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not Gibson's best, but still pretty good...
Review: As a former San Franciscan myself, I liked his vision of the Bay Area's future. And I always love the detailed landscapes he creates. I always feel like I'm getting a real glimpse into the near future when I read his work. However with this novel things begin to feel a little formulaic for me. His novels all seem to start with loosely related story lines that gradually grow closer together. Still, a very fun read.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Virtual Light lacking
Review: I enjoyed Mona Lisa Overdrive but Virtual Light grew tiresome. The plot lacks substance and Virtual Light, lacks any virtual reality. I thought with the theft of the high tech specs, the book was going to be an interesting read.

Maybe I'm just tired of the quirky, "tongue and cheek" dialogue that Gibson and Science Fiction has unfortunately restricted it self to over the last couple of decades. The author thinks that he and the reader are sharing some inside joke throughout 350 pages and it gets old. Give me some of that "old fashioned" science fiction with plot development, characters and suspense, fear and challenges. The Science Fiction as well as Cyberpunk writers could learn something from James Patterson, Michael Crichton, or Arthur C. Clarke.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: For whatever reason, I loved VIRTUAL LIGHT
Review: I make a point of reading this book every summer. The plot is straightforward enough--like almost all cyberpunk, it involves people getting their hands on forbidden data and being hunted by its rightful owners--but what I really enjoy is the human landscape that Gibson relates. The book is full of images that, for whatever reason, connected with me on a visceral level: the lonely back roads of future California, Skinner's bridgetop apartment, L.A.'s endless convenience stores and strip malls...Gibson keeps his characters moving, and successfully (at least in my case) replicates the strange, gut-level nervousness and odd euphoria of driving around an unfamiliar part of the country at nighttime. It's essentially a cyber-noir road trip story, and the journey is infinitely more significant (and fun) than the destination.

Gibson is cursed to forever take pot-shots from overhormoned teenagers for not rewriting NEUROMANCER again and again. And on rereading NEUROMANCER on the heels of reading VIRTUAL LIGHT, I noticed something for the first time: Gibson's original trilogy (NEUROMANCER/COUNT ZERO/VIRTUAL LIGHT) is missing a human heart at its center. Those books are totally concerned with looking sleek and sexy, full of meaningless sex and casual violence. Characters exist to do kewl things with gadgets and die unpleasantly. VIRTUAL LIGHT and its followups (IDORU and ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES) are different. When violent things happen in these books, it's genuinely affecting because A) it's rare and B) we actually care about the people these things are happening to. Rydell, hero of VIRTUAL LIGHT, is a goofy and charming twentysomething guy from Memphis, Tennessee whose biggest ambition in life is to hold down a paying job. His problems are real, and if Gibson's readers were plunged into the world he writes about, I have a feeling we'd have a lot more in common with Rydell than with a sexy hacker superman like Case.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good Intro to Gibson
Review: This was my first foray into cyberguru Gibson's realm, and the blend of cyberpunk and noir worked pretty well for me. Clearly Gibson is more interested in showing off his skills at imagining the gadgets and lifestyles of the near future, rather than providing any intricate plot. Indeed, the tale of a bike courier who unwittingly steals what turns out to be technology to die for, combined with a down and out former cop hired to help retrieve the missing item, rehashes some fairly familiar noir territory. But the evocation of a neighborhood built on the now unused Bay Bridge is good stuff. I especially enjoyed the clueless Japanese grad student who's trying to write an anthropology thesis about the neighborhood. If you like this, try Jonathan Lethem's "Gun With Occasional Music."

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Finally a plot!
Review: no descriptions of what it is eg: polygons etc, but how people interact with and deal with tech, the Gibson three b rule applies here Bridges, Bums, and Billionares A reasonable read

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Great story...false hook
Review: After reading Virtual Light's description on the back of the book, I was extremely interested in the fact that virtual reality was going to be a major factor in the story. However, the glasses hardly had anything to do with the story itself. I kept waiting for the importance of the glasses to become relevant, only to be disappointed by the dismal truth (which I won't reveal), and could hardly understand how stealing them could "get you killed!" Give me a break! However, Gibson's story telling is captivating as always, and his descriptions of San Francisco are splendid. I was compelled to buy another of his books as a result of reading it, and hope to enjoy it as well.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Future....Or is it now?
Review: Well, I read all the reviews, and was quity surprised by all the different opinnions, and i won't argue with people that didn't liked it, it is their point of view, and it is good that way. For me this book was great, the plot was just an extention of what i read in "specialized" newspapers, the characters where attaching, the technology was so damn close of what whe have here and now, maybe not his best work, but a great work indeed, i liked it and i just wanted to tell i liked it, as i liked all of his work.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Light reading for the train.
Review: Gibson's other works are all very compelling, and a person is forced to see things through his eyes even when its a strain. Virtual Light, however, forces nothing. This seems to have been made as a filler for the time between now and Neuromancer, but it feels bound rather than released by simplicity. Still, it is worth reading when there's nothing pressing, or you just want a break from other things. Not bad, just not "Gibson".

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: what a snore
Review: zzzzzzzzzzzz. A dreadful waste of time. No plot, no story, lots of endless running around to no purpose

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: not enough Virtual Light
Review: I really liked some of the ideas in this novel, but it doesn't seem like Gibson really runs with very many of them. The title, the cover, and the back intro of the novel, suggests that it will be about this cool virtual reality glasses, but they really play a small part of the novel, the reader barely gets to see them in action. I liked the main characters, even though it takes about 200 pages for them to really meet, which seems abit odd. I don't think this is one of Gibson's better books, but don't let this one stop you from reading some of this other novels, especially Neuromancer.


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