Book-A-Month - August 2009
Mona Lisa Overdrive is the third book in the Sprawl Trilogy, along with Neuromancer and Count Zero. I read the first two almost back to back a year or so ago, and only happened upon the trilogy's conclusion this month. It took almost a third of the way through to remember some of the more pertinent details from the first two volumes — the Tessier-Ashpools, and their reclusive orbital spire for instance.
The book was a very easy read, much like Spook Country and the rest of Gibson's books I've had the pleasure of reading. Again, however, I was struck with the single-person-on-drugs thematic element which I have yet to see anyone else take and interest in. Maybe it's so minor that no one else cares, but every one of his books that I have read to date shares it. It is as if Gibson is a closet fan of substance abuse, or that he's never experimented and wants to live its effects vicariously through one of his characters. Nevertheless, it was just as entertaining this time around. There is, again, an element of control loss when the addiction is in play.
I'm still psyching myself up to get started on The System of the World later this year. I think I'm going to cram in another book before the end of the month, and try to do another two in September so that I can spend October through December on the third tome of The Baroque Cycle and hit my "one book a month" goal, in number anyway.