The weakest of the sprawl trilogy, although still entertaining and tightly written. Does not have the same level of hallucinatory Burroughs-esque prose prose. Turner seems to be a bit of a blank -- he feels a bit like Armitage from Neuromancer, some.one who has been assembled from parts and does not have a real personality (as he was assembled physically)/ Also the Voodoo stuff feels a bit thin, and feels like some odd intrusion into the story, It is not fleshed out enough nor integrated enough into the rest of the story ( )

Like the preceding Neuromancer, William makes you make some effort to keep up, and once again, it's effort well repaid.

Adding insult to injury, this is the second copy i've tried of this book and they've both been rather badly edited.   I'm not sure whether the original book is like that or if it's the fault of the copying it over into ebook format.   Anyway, i'll judge it on the idea that the original doesn't have all the punctuation and grammar faults and judge it as a damned good book, because, for all it's faults in that area, it was well worth muddling through and making the effort for a really good story and characters.

Other thing to note: don't expect to begin where you left off with Neuromancer either, because you won't be.   Instead you'll be thrown around here there and everywhere in between with general hints and a few characters from Neuromancer popping up and/or in or maybe just getting a mention in passing.

Anyways, all is good and i'm straight into Mona Lisa Overdrive. ( )

Definitely not as engaging as Neuromancer. I never knew it was a trilogy way back when I first read Neuromancer. Thinking it shouldn't be. I probably won't read the next book. ( )

First 50% uninteresting. Somewhat cheesy. Hard to follow. Sentence fragments. ( )

I enjoyed this more than the previous book in the trilogy, Neuromancer. The first book used so many neologisms, and familiar words in unfamiliar senses, and the plot and writing style was almost impressionistic. Count Zero seems tidier. Maybe I've absorbed the neologisms and got used to the style, but I think there is more to it. I feel that the author is more in command of his writing in this volume. The story flows and grows. There's still plenty of weirdness, but the reader is better able to come along for the ride.
Now looking forward to Mona Lisa Overdrive. ( )

I read Neuromancer in 2012 and it has taken me ten years to get the motivation to read Count Zero. Sure, in the years I have picked the book up and read a page or two and every time I just did not feel like this was the novel I wanted to read. Well, I had enough of this behavior and I brought it with me to the middle of Appalachia. There is nothing much around besides kudzu and deer. I read Count Zero in about a day and a half. Count Zero is a bit of a sequel to the previous novel – one would definitely want to read Neuromancer first. However, it is not much of a direct continuation of the storyline; it is more of a continuation of the environment and setting. I liked Count Zero more because the novel just seemed a bit easier to follow.

Gibson novels are very compressed. As I read Gibson, I realize I have to read each and every word absolutely. There is no speed-reading these novels and there is no skipping. No skimming and no skipping – absolutely none, not one word. Not ever.

Reading Gibson novels is a bit tiring because he does have his own architecture and lingo that he does not explain to the reader and the context is not a huge assist, either. Having to read every single word carefully is also tedious because it makes this 246 page novel seem much longer. ( )

What can I say? Neuromancer sucked me in, and now I have to read all three. ( )

Το εικονικό Σύμπαν έχει κάνει τους ανθρώπους να λειτουργούν με μικροτσίπ. Ο ήρωας είναι ένας καουμπόι των ηλεκτρονικών δικτύων. Διεξάγει το δικό του πόλεμο, για το κέρδος φυσικά. Αλλά πριν από όλα για την επιβίωση, ανάμεσα σε ζωντανά κομπιούτερ -πιο ζωντανά από τους ανθρώπους- επικίνδυνα ή άκρως ηδονικά ολογράμματα και παράξενα φαντάσματα, που συναντάει κανείς απροσδόκητα σ ένα Κυβερνοχώρο αυτονομημένο από τους δημιουργούς του. Και βέβαια, μέσα σ όλα αυτά ο έρωτας έχει τη θέση του και κανένα Ηλεκτροσύμπαν δεν μπορεί να τον υποκαταστήσει. Ο Ουίλιαμ Γκίμπσον είναι ο γνησιότερος εκφραστής του Κυβερνοπάνκ με βραβεία Hugo, Nebula και Philip Dick.

Good, but not as good as the first one ( )

I really enjoyed Neuromancer but I'm afraid I abandoned this about a quarter of the way through. Turgid and dull and felt like word salad at times. I'm obviously out of step with the majority who see this as great literature but for me the emperor has no clothes and it's just not worth the effort. I'm now in my sixties and with less and less time to read books I have to decide what not to read - and this is one. ( )

Coming back to this years later, and it's...

*shrugs*

First time I read it, it was like looking in on an alien culture. Now, it's like looking in on an alien culture looking in on an alien culture. An excellent read, but as much so for the disconnect from when it was written as for the future it projects. ( )

On one hand, it was a lot easier to follow than Neuromancer - on the other hand, I don't think it was written as well as Neuromancer. ( )

Very solid followup and a bit easier to follow than Neuromancer. Prescient on the influence of the megacorps and there's more than a little preview of Hubertus Bigend/Cayce Pollard in Josef Virek/Marly here. The voodoo thing is a little bit inscrutable, but then again, it's Gibson, so that's likely the idea. ( )

more cyberspace adventures

Very, very, very rich guy whose body is barely alive in a tank tries to buy transfer to true being in computer w/ adventure for all

Bizarre, disjointed, unresolved

This is my second attempt to enjoy Gibson and it will be my last. Not my cup of tea for several reasons:

- Much of the dialog reads more like stream-of-consciousness babble than things people would actually say.

- Future jargon and tech thrown in with zero explanation, requiring the reader to eventually figure out what it means through repetitive context. Maybe this will take pages, maybe chapters. Some authors make this approach work; Peter F. Hamilton comes to mind. Gibson does not.

- Disjointed. The voodoo element never meshed or fit for me.

All in all, this writing comes across to me as trying to be too clever by half. I strongly prefer that an author simply tell a good story in understandable fashion. This isn't that. ( )

Nothing ever disappears in cyberspace. I read this book before, although I had forgotten until the scenes began to feel more and more familiar. I didn’t remember the ending though. Did the words follow the same neural pathways this time as last? Were the memories of the plot lingering like loas in more well lit areas of my mind? Scenes and settings got reconstructed like the little boxes that sent Josef Virek searching for the artist. Sometimes my own books seem to possess versions of those boxes, making me the multi-armed machine selecting things for inclusion and then sending them down the gravity well for sale to the real people. Like the Wig who was convinced that God lived in cyberspace, I am convinced that Gibson’s trilogy will continue to fascinate readers as long as they want to experience how it all began. ( )

This is not a traditional sequel to Neuromancer in that they mostly have a shared setting and a minor character or two appear in both. THat's okay, the story still works.
There are four narrators that alternate chapters. It takes the first third of the boopk for Gibson to make clear how the four disparate characters how fit together and during this time I had to put up with one narrator that I didn't really like. Later, when he is more involved with the others, we get to see that he is not necessarily a reliable narrator in some aspects of his story, and that does indeed make him a better character. ( )

I don't know why it took me so long to read the second in the Sprawl trilogy, but I finally got around to it. I enjoyed it a lot, but beware the dated and cringe-inducing stereotypes which shape the portrayal of the black characters. Gibson does his usual thing of having multiple storylines and POVs which eventually come together at the end in a satisfying way. The matrix idea is more detailed than in Neuromancer, and we get a glimpse of life outside the Sprawl. Also as usual, Gibson throws you into the action without much explanation, so hang on during the first 75 or so pages and you'll eventually find your bearings. ( )

This turned out to be my least favorite of the Sprawl trilogy. However, it is--like all of Gibson's work--compelling and easy to read. He investigates power and class with slick prose. But what caught my attention was the way he uses voodou; it is about "getting things done" with "street religion" in a technological world.

It's funny, because I remember when I read this the first time, all sorts of incomprehension and mistakes jumbled together as I forced my way through. I loved the writing. I loved the writing, the setting, the sci-fi cool, the characters and the three intertwining plots, but in the end I barely had a clue what was going on. The Maas biotech stuff I got, sure, another high-tech maguffin, but the loa and their horses, despite having read Neuromancer and having it all laid out quite clearly in the book itself, I just couldn't work out what they were. The identity of the Boxmaker puzzled me, too. I think I assumed it was some sort of cruel mockery directed at Art and human presumption and pretensions. But Gibson was never anywhere near as cynical as cyberpunk the genre was supposed to be, even though the cynicism of the eighties forms part of the texture of the Sprawl novels. Instead, it is strange and lonely and brave and beautiful. 'My song is of time and distance. The sadness is in you.'

Count Zero is carefully plotted, precision engineered, fine-tuned, sleek and streetwise. Three plots: the mercenary Turner who specialises in corporate defections; Marly the art dealer ruined by scandal in Paris, and Bobby the Count, a would-be cowboy hit by lethal ice on his first run and saved by... something. Their stories turn around subterfuge and betrayal, the all-enveloping power of the monstrously rich and the strange interface of voodoo and cyberspace. It's a wild, thrilling ride, and it's a wonder to me that I can grasp now what eluded me then. ( )

Not as good as Neuromancer. Found it boring actually. While book one was good this sequel did nothing but disappoint me. Couldn't get rid of it fast enough. No thank you Sprawl. ( )

Originally posted at FanLit.

They plot with men, my other selves, and men imagine they are gods.

Several years have passed since Molly and Case freed the AI who calls himself Neuromancer. Neuromancer’s been busy and now his plots have widened to involve several people whom we meet in Count Zero:

Turner is a recently reconstructed mercenary who’s been hired by the Hosaka Corporation to extract Christopher Mitchell and his daughter Angie from Mitchell’s job at Maas Biolabs. Mitchell is the creator of the world’s first biochip, and he’s secretly agreed to move to Hosaka. Extracting an indentured research scientist is a deadly game, but Turner is one of the best.

Bobby “Count Zero” Newmark, who wants to be a console cowboy, has just pulled a Wilson (that means he majorly screwed up) on his first attempt at running an unknown ... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/count-zero/
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ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

"They plot with men, my other selves, and men imagine they are gods."

Several years have passed since Molly and Case freed the AI who calls himself Neuromancer. Neuromancer’s been busy and now his plots have widened to involve several people whom we meet in Count Zero:

Turner is a recently reconstructed mercenary who’s been hired by the Hosaka Corporation to extract Christopher Mitchell and his daughter Angie from Mitchell’s job at Maas Biolabs. Mitchell is the creator of the world’s first biochip, and he’s secretly agreed to move to Hosaka. Extracting an indentured research scientist is a deadly game, but Turner is one of the best.

Bobby “Count Zero” Newmark, who wants to be a console cowboy, has just pulled a Wilson (that means he majorly screwed up) on his first attempt at running an unknown icebreaker. He nearly died in the matrix but was saved by a girl he’d never seen before. Now he’s freaked out, on the run, and buildings are exploding behind him as he’s being hunted by a mysterious helicopter with a rocket launcher.

Marly Krushkova lost her art gallery after her boyfriend tried to sell a forgery. Now she’s been hired by Joseph Virek, the world’s richest man, to find the artist who’s creating and selling some strange shadowboxes. These expensive and enigmatic objets d'art seem like collections of random pieces of junk, but they speak to Marly. Using her intuition, and Joseph Virek’s money, she hopes to find the unknown artist.

Other memorable characters are the voodoo priests and priestesses, The Finn, Tally Isham the Sense/Net celebrity, the prophet Wigan Ludgate who thinks God lives in the matrix, a bar owner named Jammer, and a whole mob of Gothicks and Kasuals. All of their stories eventually collide as we discover who’s haunting cyberspace.

Count Zero is the first sequel to William Gibson’s cyberpunk classic Neuromancer. If you haven’t read Neuromancer yet, you’ll probably be lost because Gibson just drops you into his world without instructions, explanations, or technical support. Even though you think you’ve been to his world before (it’s Earth after all), you haven’t, and Gibson never tells us what happened to make it unrecognizable. It appears that large biotech companies are in control (or maybe I should say they’re out of control) and there are no authorities to check their ruthless behaviors. What happened to the U.S. government? Why are so many cities ruined and abandoned? What is “the war” that people keep referring to? Where is the middle class? There are still rich people who buy art, wear stylish clothes, and set trends for the masses, but many of those who try to keep up are illiterate, addicted, and without electricity and clean water. They escape their lives with designer drugs and by plugging into cheap simstim fantasies.

It’s partly these questions, which are never answered, that make Neuromancer’s sequel work so well. Many sequels feel pallid because the world and the characters are no longer new and exciting, but Gibson avoids sequel stagnancy by creating a gaudy and grueling world that we feel like we should understand, and making us desperate for more information (but rarely delivering it).

It also helps that in each book of the Sprawl trilogy, we have new characters to get to know. And you have to admire Gibson’s characters. Not as people, perhaps, but as characters. For example, Bobby (Count Zero) is a total loser. He’s like that obnoxious kid in high school who was always trying so hard to make people like him. Gibson gets this just right, never explaining Bobby to us, but letting us gradually figure him out just by listening to him talk or by seeing things from his perspective. This is carefully and cleverly done for every character.

The plot of Count Zero is fascinating, unique, and unpredictable as Gibson finally brings together all of these weird and colorful events and characters. There are some answers in the end, and the story's connection to Neuromancer is eventually made clear. But there are many questions left to answer, so after you finish Count Zero, you’ll want to have Mona Lisa Overdrive, the concluding novel of the Sprawl trilogy, ready to go.

I listened to Brilliance Audio’s version of Count Zero which was read by one of my favorite voice actors, Jonathan Davis. He is always wonderful and his grimy and jaded male voices are perfect for this kind of novel. My only issue is one I’ve had with Davis before: he has essentially one female voice. I have listened to so many books read by Mr. Davis that I actually feel like this one woman is showing up in all these different novels. (Hey, what are Thecla and Agia and Vlana and Ivrian doing in the Sprawl??) Count Zero has only a few female characters who don’t overlap much, so Davis does well with this story, but I’ll be listening for Angie and Marly next time I’m in Lankhmar. ( )

( read this but don't remember anything about it ) ( )