Spook Country
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Review
A cool, sophisticated thriller (Financial Times )
Very entertaining (Independent on Sunday )
Superb, brilliant. A compulsive and deeply intelligent literary thriller (New Statesman )
A neat, up-to-the-minute spy thriller (Metro )
The present needs Gibson more than ever (Dazed & Confused )
Fascinating (Sunday Express )
Fiction with an intensely modern feel. Above all, it's exciting (The London Paper )
A brilliantly appointed world (Arena )
I'd call the book brilliant and original if only I were certain I understood it (Literary Review )
Very entertaining (Independent on Sunday )
Superb, brilliant. A compulsive and deeply intelligent literary thriller (New Statesman )
A neat, up-to-the-minute spy thriller (Metro )
The present needs Gibson more than ever (Dazed & Confused )
Fascinating (Sunday Express )
Fiction with an intensely modern feel. Above all, it's exciting (The London Paper )
A brilliantly appointed world (Arena )
I'd call the book brilliant and original if only I were certain I understood it (Literary Review )
Product Description
What happens when old spies come out to play one last game?
In New York a young Cuban called Tito is passing iPods to a mysterious old man. Such activities do not go unnoticed, however, in these early days of the War on Terror and across the city an ex-military man named Brown is tracking Tito’s movements.
Meanwhile in LA, journalist Hollis Henry is on the trail of Bobby Chombo, who appears to know too much about military systems for his own good. With Bobby missing and the trail cold, Hollis digs deeper and is drawn into the final moves of a chilling game played out by men with old scores to settle …
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
It took me a few chapters to really get into this but once I did I found it hard to put down. As usual with Gibson, he comes up with some cultural movements that I hadn't been aware of until I picked the book up: guerrilla marketing in Pattern Recognition and this time locative art. Technological trends aside, Gibson has a wonderful way with language. His sentences tend to be punchy like Raymond Chandler but far more poetic at the same time. I could really just read this book for his use of words- the plot is just extra icing on top. I can picture each scene with a cinema type clarity that few other authors achieve (for me at least) I love the little details he gives us. GSG-9 Adidas swat shoes? How cool. Only little quibble: covert ear pieces as used by the likes of Brown do not have wires attached to them. They work on induction loops like modern hearing aides and have done so for many years.
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Spook Country is a science fiction spy thriller set in our times; 2006, to be exact. Hollis Henry is a former rock star, now a journalist, set to write a piece on locative art based on the use of GPS systems and other locative technology. This leads her to Bobby Chombo, a strange guy who knows the ins and outs of military navigation systems. Tito is a member of Chinese-Cuban crime family trained in Russian military martial arts and espionage ways, asked to deliver iPods to a certain old man. Milgrim, a drug addict fluent in Russian and able to translate Volapuk encoding, is being held captive by Brown, some sort of operator, perhaps with the government, perhaps not.
It's an interesting mess that sorts out itself eventually. Gibson mixes all sorts of cool concepts and crazy ideas and curious details together to form a rather gripping book. Old spies come out of the woodwork for one last round - the big idea they're working to achieve, that's something quite different and unusual. Gibson's writing is clear and beautiful; I really enjoy his style. With Neal Stephenson he's one of those writers who will tell you a great story and pepper it with all kinds of unnecessary details that'll get your brain tingling and curiosity running.
If you liked Pattern Recognition, his previous novel, you'll enjoy this (and you'll even meet few old friends, too!). Like Pattern Recognition, Spook Country is full enough of contemporary cultural references and trademarks to tie it firmly to our time and make it age in a rather charmful manner. While these trademarks serve less purpose than they did in Pattern Recognition, I believe this book is written to readers who care if the laptop used by the protagonist is a PowerBook or not.
Excellent book, one of the best I've read in a long while.
It's an interesting mess that sorts out itself eventually. Gibson mixes all sorts of cool concepts and crazy ideas and curious details together to form a rather gripping book. Old spies come out of the woodwork for one last round - the big idea they're working to achieve, that's something quite different and unusual. Gibson's writing is clear and beautiful; I really enjoy his style. With Neal Stephenson he's one of those writers who will tell you a great story and pepper it with all kinds of unnecessary details that'll get your brain tingling and curiosity running.
If you liked Pattern Recognition, his previous novel, you'll enjoy this (and you'll even meet few old friends, too!). Like Pattern Recognition, Spook Country is full enough of contemporary cultural references and trademarks to tie it firmly to our time and make it age in a rather charmful manner. While these trademarks serve less purpose than they did in Pattern Recognition, I believe this book is written to readers who care if the laptop used by the protagonist is a PowerBook or not.
Excellent book, one of the best I've read in a long while.
27 of 34 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I've read all William Gibson's books. The Neuromancer trilogy was just wonderful. But then, slowly, his books changed; through Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties and then Pattern Recognition, he moved into a different time. Not really a different genre though. I mean, you could say that Pattern Recognition and Spook Country are thrillers, spy novels, but they're not. They're really not.
Whenever I read a Gibson novel, I find myself wishing that I lived in his world. But then I realise that, basically, I do. And that's what's so magical about them. It's Gibson's take on our existing world that makes you look at it in a new way, from a new perspective. Surely that must be one of the greatest things a novelist can do. His prose is so tight, so condensed and yet has so many echoes, so many extra-cultural references that it's like reading a novel, a map, a web-page, a history book all wrapped up together.
Look up Hubertus Bigend on Wikipedia. That's what one of his characters does. If you do, you'll find an entry referencing this book. This kind of reflexivity is central to this book. The merging of quite separate worlds - rock music, money laundering, marketing, geo-politics, voodoo religion - suggests a side of globalisation not explored anywhere else in this form. Referring to global brand names is simply one side of this - a Brabus Maybach for heaven's sake! (have a look at the Brabus web-site, with sound on) - just grounds this in something akin to a material fantasy.
In some ways, the characters represent these different worlds, or at least different aspects of them. Milgrim, addicted to Ativan (1987 Ativan advertisement. "In a world where certainties are few...no wonder Ativan® (lorazepam)C-IV is prescribed by so many caring clinicians.") seemingly captured by Brown (the secret agent?), finally just walks away, free to go back to his favourite book on the history of heresy. Brown, scary but fundamentally old school and out of his depth, violent in his ignorance, Tito, of indeterminate race and innocent esoteric skills, Hollis, ex obscure rock star, lost all her money in the dot com bubble, cynical, worldly-wise, and Bigend, manipulative but still somehow childlike, playing with ideas and technologies.
The story is good. The characters are good. The premise is good. The execution almost faultless. A gripping read. A fab book.
Whenever I read a Gibson novel, I find myself wishing that I lived in his world. But then I realise that, basically, I do. And that's what's so magical about them. It's Gibson's take on our existing world that makes you look at it in a new way, from a new perspective. Surely that must be one of the greatest things a novelist can do. His prose is so tight, so condensed and yet has so many echoes, so many extra-cultural references that it's like reading a novel, a map, a web-page, a history book all wrapped up together.
Look up Hubertus Bigend on Wikipedia. That's what one of his characters does. If you do, you'll find an entry referencing this book. This kind of reflexivity is central to this book. The merging of quite separate worlds - rock music, money laundering, marketing, geo-politics, voodoo religion - suggests a side of globalisation not explored anywhere else in this form. Referring to global brand names is simply one side of this - a Brabus Maybach for heaven's sake! (have a look at the Brabus web-site, with sound on) - just grounds this in something akin to a material fantasy.
In some ways, the characters represent these different worlds, or at least different aspects of them. Milgrim, addicted to Ativan (1987 Ativan advertisement. "In a world where certainties are few...no wonder Ativan® (lorazepam)C-IV is prescribed by so many caring clinicians.") seemingly captured by Brown (the secret agent?), finally just walks away, free to go back to his favourite book on the history of heresy. Brown, scary but fundamentally old school and out of his depth, violent in his ignorance, Tito, of indeterminate race and innocent esoteric skills, Hollis, ex obscure rock star, lost all her money in the dot com bubble, cynical, worldly-wise, and Bigend, manipulative but still somehow childlike, playing with ideas and technologies.
The story is good. The characters are good. The premise is good. The execution almost faultless. A gripping read. A fab book.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Kindle edition
The kindle edition is full of errors. I had read the book in hardcover before, so I could (somehow) enjoy reading it again on my kindle, but the quantity of typos and errors is... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Alberto Brealey-Guzmán
No time like the present
I picked this book up from a second-hand stall to take on a trip to New York (which is the location for much of its action). Read more
Published 6 months ago by Jeremy Walton
Spook Country:more traditional thriller with the sensiblity of Pattern...
Spook Country's strenth lies in one of Gibson's best characters, Hubertus Bigend and meaningful exploration of genre. Read more
Published 8 months ago by George H-J
I'm obviously missing something here!!!
I read Pattern Recognition and really enjoyed it but this one just passed me by I'm afraid.
Three story threads which come together at the end in a pretty... Read more
Three story threads which come together at the end in a pretty... Read more
Published 13 months ago by R Smith
Poor Kindle Edition
I'm sure this is another fine William Gibson novel, but there's no way it's getting more than three stars from me when the edition I just paid Ł6. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Matt Gibson
diabolist
The Kindle edition of this book has many typographical errors including the inability to even spell the main protagonists name correctly. Read more
Published 19 months ago by A. I. Premdas
It finished and I was wondering if I had missed the story?
Exactly, I got the to the end of the book and genuinely wondered if I had just read a really long assay. Where was the story, the fabulous twist? Read more
Published 19 months ago by vaughanie
Technosnoozer
Like some other readers, I was pretty bored by this one - and I'm a Gibson fan, or was... I did love locative art and viral-only Blue Ant and the idea of the container. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Bob Ventos
Spook Country
"Spook Country" is very different compared to William Gibsons' previous brilliant books e.g. "Neuromancer", "Mona Lisa Overdrive" etc. Read more
Published on 22 Sep 2009 by J. Peebles
Close but no banana
Being a new-comer to Gibson's work, I picked this up in an airport and read it, interspersed with Quantum of Solace, on the flight home. Read more
Published on 5 May 2009 by Fozzy O'Toole
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