Rating: 
Summary: Vintage Gibson: a disappointment
Review: Idoru is "vintage Gibson" -- his own blend of ideas, technology and behavior in a darker future.
The problem with good writers who tend to repeat themselves is that their reconstituted ideas come up as lacklustre the second and third time around. This is one of Idoru's chief failings: seen for the first time, the concepts are fresh and exciting; seen for the fourth or fifth time, they lack the original novelty. In this case, "vintage" doesn't add value to the seasoned cyberpunk fan.
If you're a follower of Gibson's cyberpunk vision, you'll mildly enjoy this novel, but wonder if you should purchase his next offering; if you're new to this realm, you'll want to find out more.
Rating: 
Summary: Neither Ideas Nor Characters Come to Life
Review: This is my first experience of Gibson, having been an avid SF fan in the past.
For me, the best SF combines the development of exciting ideas with well-formed characters. Good SF usually has interesting ideas but flat characters. "Idoru" has flat characters and a real paucity of new ideas. It is one of those books you forget 10 seconds after you put in down. It is certainly very readable and fast-moving - a kind of futuristic Jeffrey Archer. But like Archer, it has no substance. And the ending was quite frankly abysmal.
As for the "futuristic" Tokyo - well I live here, and 95% of what he describes is already here today - but then most of his readers won't know that, of course.
A real disappointment, in my opinion.
Rating: 
Summary: William Gibson's Idoru: the end of the legend?
Review: With his new novel 'Idoru', William Gibson once again explores the near-future realm of cyberpunk that has been his stock in trade since the seminal 'Neuromancer'. Set more in the very-near future of his last novel 'Virtual Light', 'Idoru' nevertheless abounds with the familiar imagery of worldwide webworks and quasilegal hackers.
The prose is red-hot, and at its best carries the reader away completely. Gibson's trademark style is fluid and visual, like a sparsely scripted mental movie where you fill in the blanks.
Still, the problem is not in the setting, or rather the problem is the setting. Because this time around Gibson spends an inordinate amount of time developing settings and characters that, in the end, go practically nowhere. Too much of 'Idoru' is spent with Gibson showing off his metaphor muscles, proving once again that he can design interesting characters, and extrapolate clever offshoots from the gomi of today's pop culture mainstays. But these are things he doesn't need to prove to anyone who has ever read him. We already know you can write, Bill.
Then there are the clever little cultural references he embeds to gloat at the general ignorance of his readers. During an interview scene, the fictional rock star Rez paraphrases almost word-for-word the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy song 'Music & Politics'. (Yes, Mr. Gibson, I'm one of the twenty other people who bought the album.).
On a somewhat higher plane is the passage in which the hero, Laney, recounts how a former childhood friend had claimed to know the names of some voodoo gods. Laney is disbelieving, because the names sounded made up. Rendered as O'Gunn and Sam Eddy, the references slip by the first time, and only upon re-reading did I realize he referred to Ogoun and Baron Samedi. Nice touch.
Overall, 'Idoru' disappoints, not in its execution but in the fact that it doesn't deliver on its promise. The attempts to tie the two disparate storylines together fail, with the exception of the mock funeral scene. And we are left with a promise of a shattering climax which pops and fizzles.
It may just be that Gibson has fallen prey to the syndrome of all very successful writers. No longer needing to write to earn a living, he has fallen into personal excess, with no one left to tell him he's getting carried away. Well, here's a bulletin, Bill. Try harder.
Jan Makarewicz
Rating:
Summary: Forget it is Gibson and you might enjoy it
Review: I would agree with the other reviewers who question whether Gibson arrived on the idol scene too late. The book is Gibson's most sparse to date but does have some interesting ideas. It is one of those books that will cause you to think of things on your own that are much cooler than what is in the book. Worth reading if you are a fan
Rating: 
Summary: a good read--pundits just shut up already
Review: gibson writes good fiction with a excellent sense of timing and narrative push. period. if you don't like him, you don't like him. if you do (and there are many of us), you appreciate the little things he does for the readers, like, above all, tell a good story.
i believed virtual light was exceptional, and idoru is a nice pseudo-sequel. just reading all the terminal babble about a lack of originality and "gibson has lost it" is tiresome. if you don't like it, don't buy his next book. then maybe we won't have any more movies with Keanue Reeves..
Rating:
Summary: His best book since Neuromancer
Review: It seems like reality has almost caught up with William Gibson. His ideas aren't as fresh as they were in earlier works. His description of the Net comes pretty close to the Internet, and the whole Idol stuff happened some time ago. But Idoru makes it up with a thrilling and fast-moving story, likable characters and a beautiful ending. Definitely worth reading
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing and incomplete
Review: It had to happen sooner or later: After such brilliance as "Virtual Light" and "Burning Chrome," Gibson has really slipped. The meandering plot, the calling-forth of characters from "Virtual Light," and the dependence on Japanese hi-tech news, and finally, the ending which left nearly everything hanging... The premise of "Idoru" is not new, by any means. As an American who lived in Japan from 1987 to 1997, I have seen human "Idoru's" as well as virtual ones created on CD Rom for adult "games" as well as "famicom," the fore-runner of the Play Station and the Nintendo. Watch nearly any Japanese Anime, and you find that the "Idoru" has existed for a long time. Hopefully, so will Gibson's talent, but quite frankly, this latest book puts that into question
Rating:
Summary: Gibson does Austen
Review: CYBERSENSE AND SENSIBILITY
William Gibson's "Idoru" is his most uplifting novel to date. It's all about love. From the fanatic jealousies of teen-idol fan clubs and tender online fidelities, to seering moments of amorous angina found in the tender retelling of the age-old story---boy meets cybergirl, boy gets cybergirl---Gibson deftly proffers cyberpunk homage to Jane Austen.
But of course the backdrop isn't 19th century English society but the chronic, blighted rubblescape of a post-quake Japan teetering twenty-seconds into the future. Far from any bucolic Howard's End, Gibson's world features huge buildings that silently erect themselves in autonomous urban renewal. Civil society is replaced by virtual cabals that are plafully aloof, haughty and addictive. No empire to count on for order or manners, international hi-tech gangs run free in the streets and technologically enabled voyeurs can discover the secrets of any hidden life. It's just harder to nail down corporate desire than the psychic secretions of carbon-based life.
Like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, the story takes its time in knitting together the outer edges of the several subplots and intrigue. Colin Laney's resume and job search as a drug-morphed data miner is the chief vehicle that pedals the story along. Able to conjure patterns or "signatures" of a person's life from vast stores of credit data and video clips, Laney is recruited by retro corporate tough guys to get at the bottom of a rockstar's honorable intentions. Does Rez, of the pop band Lo/Rez, really have the hots for Rei Toei, the alluring, self-conscious virtual media star adored throughout the world and particularly in Japan? Chia McKenzie, the genre's prerequisite 14-year-old heroine, follows this same quest, but as an official representative of the band's international fan club full of swooning girls biting their knuckles raw over losing their pop-star boy toy to a not so material girl. Throw in a quart of corporate espionage and betrayal, a pinch of Russian mafia muscle, and a few handy tips on how to smuggle nanotech contraband past hapless customs agents; mix and pour. No Disney dollars, yet a weirdly happy ending when all of the subplots finally collide after twisting around each other for two hundred pages. Strip away all of Gibson's dark, now commonplace, window dressing and Idoru stretches out a period piece love story where Madonna would be more agreeably cast than Emma Thompson.
Rating:
Summary: A fun ride, if one knows what to expect.
Review: I think Gibson is to cyberpunk was Jobs was to microcomputers...a reasonable, but not excessive, talent who was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time in a new endeavor. Does he integrate recycled ideas? Sure. Anyone who draws from pop culture (or counterculture) draws from some communal repository of ideas and imagery; the question is, what vitality does the artist/tour-guide feed back into that repository as interest paid on the recycled material? In my opinion at least, the added value is in the (generally) crisp and engaging language, and in the insight that language gives into Gibson's energy-charged visualization of his narrative worlds.Does he push hip too far? Yeah, some (but not many) of his sentences hit the ear with a heavy thud. Gibson's an Icon now, and reputations are damnable, slippery things to maintain. He tries too hard sometimes. But, really, to proclaim that he's lost it? I'm an old geezer, and my experience is that GenX, for all its gritty airs of convict loyalty, is about as ruthless as nomadic tribes get, when the time comes to leave the less-than-beautiful behind for the wolves. For me, a Gibson book is all journey and no particular destination...in fact, with the exception of a couple of his short pieces in Burning Chrome, I don't think he's ever finished a story properly. I still look forward to his new work, and I still thoroughly enjoy him, but I know what I'm getting up front. I guess if co-option by an older generation is a sure kiss of death for a trend, then I've just sealed Gibson's doom
Rating: 
Summary: Nantte Datte Idoru
Review: What do you call it, when someone takes other people's idea
and call it his own? This is what this book is all about.
Gibson takes the "Idoru" theme, which was overused and abused
in the Japanese anime, and create a story that is neither orginal
nor interesting when compared to your average anime story. I,
for one believe that Megazone 23, which was created by the same artist
that created Macross Super Dimension Fortress, or as it was called
here, Robotech, is a much better story. Neuromancer was original for its time,
but when a writer's creative juice runs dry, something like
this happens. A little plot line from Megazone 23, a boy fall
in love with an Idoru, or so he thought, what he did not know is
that she does not really exist, she is a 100% computer generated
idol that is the apex of all men's fantasy. The boy thought he
lived in a city called Tokyo, of course what he did not know is
that Tokyo was destroyed 500 years ago, he actually lived in a
control atmosphered spaceship, a virtual reality world. The
story unfolds as he discovers the so called truth, in which
the idoru only lives in the television tube, and the live call
in idoru show has no live callers, but computer generated voices.
Gibson is really ruining his name as the godfather of the cyber
punk generation was this kind of unoriginal work, and that little
chia pet really reminds me a lot of Sailormoon. Disney will never
admit that Lion King is a zeroxed copy from Japanese master Tezuka
Osamu, but people that know knows Disney is lying. At least Idoru
is not a direct carbon copy like Lion King, Gibson probably got his
idea from several sources, but still it does not make it right.
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