Noir

Rating:
Summary: Lots of promise, but not reward ...
Review: I really tried to like this book. I think the concept of seeing the world through a filter of 'noir' is awesome. I also think the setting of this novel is very interesting in a Gibsonesque way. But. When I noticed the protagonist is called McNihil, and an office early in the book is called "Foucault & Derrida", I felt like throwing the book out of the window. IMO, this book has some very good ideas, but the execution is awful I gave up on reading it 20 pages from the end - too irritating. I expected more from a personal friend of PKD.

Rating:
Summary: Fills a badly needed void
Review: I used to have mixed feelings about Jeter's work. I liked Farewell Horizontal and Infernal Machines (his homage to James Blaylock and Tim Powers), but was unimpressed with his other books. Now my feelings are no longer mixed, because Noir was truly awful. If I had the option, I would have given it no stars, perhaps negative stars. Why? Primarily because in Noir Jeter is self-indulgent to a fault. The protagonist is named McNihil. There are all sorts of implausible technological and social developments apparently thrown in for their sheer shock value. Worst of all, the reader is treated to a lengthy and shocking Grand Guignol discussion of the appropriate punishments for violators of copyright. It is very disturbing to realize that Jeter thinks it is amusing to contemplate someone's living brain being excised and used in stereo equipment (see the author's note). Not only is this distasteful, it is also artistically lax: Noir turns out to be a very boring book, as well as an offensively bloody one. (Really, combining such boredom with such gory detail is something of a triumph, negatively speaking.) I plan not to read Jeter's work any more.

Rating:
Summary: I'm sorry, I really am ...
Review: I WANTED to love this book. I really did. I was excited when I bought it, and tore into it hoping for great things. But it doesn't live up. The "black and white" hook which seems to make it unique feels like a late edition add-on to make it more marketable and separate it from the William Gibson library from which it seems inspired.

If the author was unknown, I'd swear this was William Gibson experimenting under a pseudonym, especially in light of his most recent horribly written X-files episode.

Rating:
Summary: Could use a little more structure...
Review: I'm disappointed with this novel. I found the main character implausible: his cyber-eyes are not very credible, and even the author seems to forget how they should work for dozens of pages. His work is even less plausible. The Collection Agency and the episode in which the main character does one of his "jobs" seems to just be an excuse to rant about the author's view on copyright. Lastly, the final part with the showdown against the main villain is more than a little confusing, and the evil-megacorporation-plot-against-everything-and everybody is cliched and, again, not very plausible, either on technical or social grounds. I suspect that the book was put together under some kind of pressure, and the various parts don't seem to fit well together.

Rating:
Summary: Dark....
Review: If you can find your way through this book, you'll be presented with a grim, yet somewhat plausible vision of the future. What better place to set the dark and miserable modern world than in Los Angeles? Jeter is very gifted at screwing with one's head, then presenting something completely intellectually enthralling...very good!

Rating:
Summary: Why, oh why?
Review: If you don't care about the issues of copyright infringement, don't read this book. The main character's job is to hunt down, catch, and capture copyright infringers. Once captured, the person is reduced to the minimum brain/spinal matter needed to sustain awareness, then implanted into the device of the copyright holder's desire. Like a toaster or stereo speak cables.

The whole book merely stands a forum for the author to get his point across that he hates copyright infringers. The characters, plot, and setting are all a sideshow. At several points, the main character spouts several pages of diatribe (to himself, no less) about the evils of copyright infringement and how it almost ruined the world. Give me a break!

The book seemed promising. I especially liked the whole debt culture aspect of the book and how it interacts with death. In addition, the author's take on religion is cynical and mean. I like that.

However, given that the plot is meaningless, it doesn't make too much sense, and the dialog is not so good. The author is also quite descriptive, often coming back and describing the same things repeatedly in mind-numbing and irrelevant detail.

Save the few precious hours of your life that it would take to read this book and read something good. If you decide to go ahead anyway, I'll give you my copy for one US penny (+ shipping...)

(review updated) Someone took me up on my offer.

Rating:
Summary: Off beat look at the future
Review: Imagine a world where the latest tattoo is neon, under the skin, and changes constantly, where debt is the overriding distinction of when, where and how you will die or live. And that debt is constantly updated, immediately available.

This is a nuts book, a great book: reminiscent of the classics like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. It was a read I wanted to throw away and forget. Instead, I could not put it down.

The view it has of the future chills to the bone, it often sounds soulless and devoid of the rudiments of humanity but nonetheless rings possible in so many regards. Still, the qualities of commitment, compassion, loyalty, and forgiveness do shine through at unexpected moments, putting the rest of the story into sharp relief. The unexpected twists spun my head around, the integrity and ambivalence of the main character especially. Sometimes his acts of kindness seem to be just a sham put on to cover up his inability to feel or relate to his feelings. There is an unrelenting sadness to the story that I was unprepared for. You would not believe where K. W. Jeter will take you with this one. Months later it still chases around in my head.

This author is my favorite kind of Science Fiction writer - he sets up a story that is incredibly plausible, then he makes me think about the philosophical quandaries that the new age will require me to make clear to myself: what is ultimately important, worth risking it all for, of real value - and what kinds of things (objectives, priorities, morals, attitudes) need to be pitched in order to save the future?

Rating:
Summary: patience, patience....
Review: In between all the convoluted prose, the book can get interesting. However, he goes of on an "artistic" tangent way too much. To like this book, you have to have the patience to wade through it, and the foresight to know which pages to just skip.

Rating:
Summary: A Dip Into the DARKSIDE
Review: In NOIR by K.W. Jeter the author dishes up a new slice of reality-one seen through the cyber-fixed eyes of his "asp head" character McNihil. McNihil prefers the noir reality to the world of neurotechnology, brain manipulation, others were forced to endure. The work he has done on his vision permits him to see a world with noir (black & white) vision. Noir vision appears to win out in the end. As one character described it, "Maybe the old movies had finally leaked out from McNihil's private universe to the world at large so everyone could see them at last the way he did."

Using a hero who can't really be killed off does present an alternate reality that no doubt Jeter's real life hero, Philip K. Dick, would enjoy. In fact Jeter uses one of Dick's best lines, "Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away," without attribution. Perhaps since continuing the Blade Runner novels Jeter sees their identities as blurred together.

Jeter creates his own Alice down the cyberspace, x-rated rabbit hole he calls the Wedge World. The capitalistic villain of the story attempts to turn the Wedge World into a vector pool, where a "vector" disease will infect the minds of all those who come a lusting after sex. McNihil's noir vision allows him to avoid this trap but not without paying the ultimate price.

This experimental genre seems to ask the question: Can you unwind a story with a hero who emerges from a pure, nihilistic womb? Or to put it another way can the reader identify with a hero who not only has a fetish for murder but for making audio cables out of human spines (Reminiscent of Hitler's human skin lamp shades). How about a hero who speaks with the dead and even narrates the story from his own deceased tongue? The speaking dead could have been a literary device to assure the reader he wasn't talking about flesh and blood people, rather in metaphors with which to spotlight reality's riddles.

Rating:
Summary: A Dip Into the DARKSIDE
Review: In NOIR by K.W. Jeter the author dishes up a new slice of reality-one seen through the cyber-fixed eyes of his "asp head" character McNihil. McNihil prefers the noir reality to the world of neurotechnology, brain manipulation, others were forced to endure. The work he has done on his vision permits him to see a world with noir (black & white) vision. Noir vision appears to win out in the end. As one character described it, "Maybe the old movies had finally leaked out from McNihil's private universe to the world at large so everyone could see them at last the way he did."

Using a hero who can't really be killed off does present an alternate reality that no doubt Jeter's real life hero, Philip K. Dick, would enjoy. In fact Jeter uses one of Dick's best lines, "Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away," without attribution. Perhaps since continuing the Blade Runner novels Jeter sees their identities as blurred together.

Jeter creates his own Alice down the cyberspace, x-rated rabbit hole he calls the Wedge World. The capitalistic villain of the story attempts to turn the Wedge World into a vector pool, where a "vector" disease will infect the minds of all those who come a lusting after sex. McNihil's noir vision allows him to avoid this trap but not without paying the ultimate price.

This experimental genre seems to ask the question: Can you unwind a story with a hero who emerges from a pure, nihilistic womb? Or to put it another way can the reader identify with a hero who not only has a fetish for murder but for making audio cables out of human spines (Reminiscent of Hitler's human skin lamp shades). How about a hero who speaks with the dead and even narrates the story from his own deceased tongue? The speaking dead could have been a literary device to assure the reader he wasn't talking about flesh and blood people, rather in metaphors with which to spotlight reality's riddles.