Count Zero

A mercenary, an art dealer, and a computer hacker walk into a cyberpunk novel. In Count Zero, three separate storylines eventually merge and the book ends with incidents of great loss and perhaps a bit of redemption. Count Zero is book two in William Gibson's sprawl trilogy and I liked it a little bit better than it's predecessor, Neuromancer, if only because the story was less opaque. Gibson's writing is again beautiful, rich and evocative. The book contains reflections on the nature of art that are filled with loss and longing. There is the great attention to detail that makes the decaying future seem lived-in and very real. There are scenes of high-tech violence and deck jockeys cowboying through the matrix, and Gibson writes them all with great skill. Because of the wonderful writing style, I found it very easy to get totally immersed in this novel, my brain not worrying too much about the structures of plot and storytelling, but instead simply riding along on waves of evocative language. There is a story, and a structure, and they all hold together very well (as best I can determine; as I mentioned, the story is a bit opaque), but that's not why I visit Gibson's sprawl. I like good writing, and Gibson writes good. After reading Neuromancer and now Count Zero, I am eager to dive into this world one more time with the final book in the trilogy, Mona Lisa Overdrive.