Rating: 
Summary: Reality vs. Artificial Reality
Review: "If it's reality, how can it possibly be artificial?" One of Pat Cadigan's characters asks this question in her novel Tea from an Empty Cup. Cadigan uses the remainder of her novel comparing and contrasting reality and AR (artificial reality) and showing the limitations of the two worlds. Cadigan achieves this by taking the reader on two journeys: one of a homicide detective investigating the death of a young man in AR and the other of a girl looking for her friend who disappeared in AR. The novel starts with a chapter which seems disconnected from the rest of the book until the reader reaches the end and sees how the first chapter fits in. The novel continues with the interchanging of the aforementioned journeys.
I found it difficult to keep the stories of the homicide detective and the girl straight as they have quite similar experiences in some parts of the book. Also, every time I started a new chapter, I had to return to the previous chapter to refresh my memory as to what was happening. The two stories woven into one novel made the book somewhat difficult to understand and slightly confusing, but it added another dimension to the novel and kept me reading to discover how the stories were related.
Tea from an Empty Cup starts out a little slow, has action in the middle, and has an ending that leaves the reader a little confused, but overall is worth the few hours it takes to read.
Rating:
Summary: Reality vs. Artificial Reality
Review: "If it's reality, how can it possibly be artificial?" One of Pat Cadigan's characters asks this question in her novel Tea from an Empty Cup. Cadigan uses the remainder of her novel comparing and contrasting reality and AR (artificial reality) and showing the limitations of the two worlds. Cadigan achieves this by taking the reader on two journeys: one of a homicide detective investigating the death of a young man in AR and the other of a girl looking for her friend who disappeared in AR. The novel starts with a chapter which seems disconnected from the rest of the book until the reader reaches the end and sees how the first chapter fits in. The novel continues with the interchanging of the aforementioned journeys.
I found it difficult to keep the stories of the homicide detective and the girl straight as they have quite similar experiences in some parts of the book. Also, every time I started a new chapter, I had to return to the previous chapter to refresh my memory as to what was happening. The two stories woven into one novel made the book somewhat difficult to understand and slightly confusing, but it added another dimension to the novel and kept me reading to discover how the stories were related.
Tea from an Empty Cup starts out a little slow, has action in the middle, and has an ending that leaves the reader a little confused, but overall is worth the few hours it takes to read.
Rating: 
Summary: These are quotes from some reviews of the novel.
Review: "...a damn good trip through a dangerous landscape to a satisfying conclusion ...An enviable accomplishment." -- Mark W Tiedemann in New York Review of Science Fiction"...tight, ingenious, and very sharply written ... terrific texture and weight ... Cadigan proves to be as tricky as ever" - Gary K Wolfe in Locus "...a sure winner" -- Science Fiction Chronicle "Fast-paced and exciting, it's a wittily written cyberpunk thriller...Recommended." - Matrix (British SF Assocation Newsletter) "What begins as a routine cyberspace mystery has, by the final chapters, become something altogether trickier." - Sunday Express "Lucid, intelligent and eminently readable; Empty Cup would suggest that Cadigan's return is going to be a triumphant one." - Ariel, writing in Flux (Manchester) "...pyrotechnic style and intensely detailed descriptions of cyberspace...This well-done example of cyberpunk noir detective fiction should especially appeal to fans of William Gibson." - Publishers Weekly "a sharp reminder of why [Pat Cadigan] became one of the leading cyberpunk writers ... truly mythic resonances ... in the dream landscapes of her artificial worlds." -- Andrew Wilson, The Scotsman
Rating: 
Summary: Cyberspace for Dummies?
Review: ...Most of "Tea" chronicles the investigations of two people, The World's Most Clueless Detective (tm) and The World's Most Gullible Semi-Girlfriend (tm). They're both looking for someone - the detective is investigating a murder, and the girlfriend is looking her favorite jerk. The deeply irritating thing is that neither of them have a great deal of experience with AR (that's Alternate Reality) and we have to watch not just one, but BOTH of them fumble ineptly through a painfully dull cyberspace (a big, burned out, and frequently empty city... but I will say that[i was]was completely unprepared for[the ending], for two reasons: (1) it's a twist I never would have expected, and (2) it is so much more creative and intelligent than the rest of the book...I had to re-read a few pages, and was happy to do so. The ending alone gets the book an extra star; it's too bad the preceding 95% of the story achieve anywhere near that level of inspiration.
Rating:
Summary: Konstantin
Review: 2 stars for using 'Konstantin' as a name for the female protagonist. The story just kind of disappears at the end, maybe a little to 'spiritual' for me. I really enjoyed "Synners" and was quite disappointed with this effort.
Rating: 
Summary: Fool me once. . .
Review: Cyberspace is addictive, expensive and ultimately boring. Thanks for the newsflash. With numerous typographical errors, undifferentiated cardboard characters, a murderously tedious whodunit and the most uninteresting rendition of cyberpunk in a decade, Cadigan has achieved a new low in modern science fiction.
Would have been more appropriately titled, Words from an Empty Book (and even that sounds more interesting than this book ends up being).
Rating:
Summary: Utter Tripe
Review: Cyberspace is addictive, expensive and ultimately boring. Thanks for the newsflash. With numerous typographical errors, undifferentiated cardboard characters, a murderously tedious whodunit and the most uninteresting rendition of cyberpunk in a decade, Cadigan has achieved a new low in modern science fiction.
Would have been more appropriately titled, Words from an Empty Book (and even that sounds more interesting than this book ends up being).
Rating: 
Summary: Give us a new world please...
Review: First of all, Pat Cadigan at her worst is better than 95% of the science fiction authors out there. With that said, this debacle, "Tea from an Empty Cup," could use a little help. What is so disappointing for me is that the general themes of this book rely so heavily on well-established cyberpunk convention. Apocalyptic cityscapes, artificial realities, and this Gibsonesque "Japanese-ness" all have been explored in more unique ways before this book. While much of the book travels this old territory, SOME of the ideas are quite good. Cadigan is at her best when exploring the nature of identity and its fallibilty in regards to technological communities - it's what she did in both "Synners" and "Fools" (both of which are better, more substantive books than this one). This book is a mild success on that front, but it fails to give us a new context in which to put it - to suss out all of the ramifications of her theories. I think this text had the potential to be much more dangerous and interesting if she had made these matters more relevant and focused, possibly by building the world of the text around her actual plot instead of this "plug-and-play" environment that has been used countless times before. Using tried tropes of the cyberpunk field is not a way to get past the work of setting up an environment that the book could actually benefit from. In fact, Cadigan would do well to try and shed herself of the "goddess of cyberpunk" moniker that she's apparently trying to keep. Cadigan is an amazing talent, a great storyteller - if she ever builds us a world as variegated as her plots and the technology being utilized, and tries to keep it relevant to modern-day readers, she's going to turn cyberpunk on its head. It's a quick read at a short 250 pages or so. If you've read and enjoyed her other work, you'll probably be satiated. Worth reading if you've got a hankering to toy with notions of identity, but not if you've only got time for the truly revalatory.
Rating:
Summary: A fairly flaccid novel for Cadigan
Review: Honestly, I was expecting more after having read "Patterns", a collection of short stories from Cadigan. There was just too much in here that made me go "hunh?" You've got this cop who goes into VR for the first time and is either annoyingly naieve or annoyingly insightful, but not both. Theres a maelstrom of minor storylines that never get fleshed out and only serve to distract from the main storylines. I've read it twice now, hoping that on second read it'd get better. Nope!
Rating:
Summary: Fool me once. . .
Review: I bought this book based on a slew of hushed and awed reviews, and now issue fair warning. This is a shallow, pretentious, dull and silly book, which doesn't so much end as stagger to a halt. Word is that the 'story' picks up in a following book but, fool me once . . . Like Delmar, shackled in the flickering blue unreality of a picture show, I warn, "Do not seek the treasure." Unlike Delmar I know it is because there is no treasure to be found.
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