Pat Cadigan

WTF.

I finally (FINALLY) finished this slim little paperback last night. I struggled with it due to an inability to give a shit about any of the characters or about the details of Post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty. Especially with the scenes in PANYS. I think the reader is supposed to find the vision of virtual reality compelling or interesting? It definitely wasn't either of those things.

The characters just have no motivations that make sense. Yuki risks her life and liberty to find Tom... because she sort of has a crush on him that she knows is one-sided? OK, if you insist. The hint-hint-nudge-nudge-possibly-not-straight police detective Konstantin in the space of a few hours goes from never having set foot in VR to plunging into it headfirst not once but twice despite having no idea what she's going to do when she gets there, or if it'll advance her investigation, or be allowed evidence in court? And then she proceeds to blunder around and answer approximately zero of her questions both times? What the fuck. Tom sold the drug and the suit to Ash in order to then sell his body/death to a wealthy thrillseeker? WHY?? Is he suddenly in league with Joy Flower, or is he trying to compete with her business? Never explained.

The two viewpoints characters are female, as are the main villain(s? I have zero idea what we're supposed to think of Body Sativa's actions), and a majority of the other characters with speaking parts. That's pretty cool. There's also some gender bending, which is mostly irrelevant, although I think the book was trying to make some kind of point about gender and embodiment in AR. (It failed.) Konstantin and Tom are interpretable as queer if you squint really hard, but Konstantin's ex is never given a pronoun and I'm not sure if we're supposed to make something of the fact that the Tom's avatar is an androgyne and that he's not into Yuki.

If I gave a shit, I could probably read the entire book again and the ending might make more sense. Unfortunately, I really, really don't.

Not that it's badly written. I didn't hate it. I'm just incredibly unimpressed. This book set out to explore some really complicated ideas and it failed to do justice to any of them.… (mere)

Good cyberpunk by and about women, which is a refreshing change of perspective from a very male dominated sub-genre.
Fair warning to crunchy cyberpunk fans, this deals almost exclusively with artificial reality and the nature of our perception of reality self, to the detriment if not outright exclusion of many of the genre's other tropes. I would say a good three quarters of this novel takes place within various 'layers' of artificial reality. A concept treated in an interesting, almost spiritual, sense.
Good enough of a read that I'll pick up the sequel.… (mere)