Reviews and Comments

Lovely read, recommended for those that liked Neuromancer and those that tried to like it. It works standalone and might be worth a try if, like me, you had trouble getting through the first part.

Three stories, that seem unrelated at first but interweave beautifully towards the end, each contributing to the satisfying ending. Each story expands on a different part of the retro futuristic vision Gibson established in Neuromancer. We explore different locations in America (mainly the sprawl of the east coast, between Boston and New York), Paris, Brussels and Earth's orbit, through the eyes of a newbie hacker, a mercenary and an art curator.

In a way the world feels more grounded than in Neuromancer, while the themes are even more esoteric. Gibson foregoes technical feasibility in favour of something that could be described as cyber-magic. Sure, you could potentially try to explain how jockeys establish some kind of, potentially lethal, neural link with the cyberspace, but it works just fine within the story. Really, this is not for you if you prefer long technical info-dumps.

This is book is definitely one of my SF favorites.

I am not a historian, thus I cannot speak to the validity of specific details he provides, but Jared Diamond builds his thesis on why western societies dominate the globe today, on such solid groundwork, that I cannot imagine the broad strokes of his theory being refuted in the future. The book gives an overview about the evolutionary biology of crops and livestock, prehistory, history, geography and the influences of each field on the others. A large focus is put on the areas of Southeast-Asia/Oceania and South America. As a layman with general knowledge of the topics (I watch too much science YouTube) I found everything comprehensible, though many theses are repeated so many times, that often I got confused and could not tell wether I already read a section or not. In summary, if you are like me and watch a lot of science YouTube, this book will give you a bit of a deeper insight into the developement of human society without focusing too much on a single discipline.