Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson

Mona Lisa Overdrive is the third book in the Sprawl Trilogy by William Gibson. I read Neuromancer and Count Zero last month, and enjoyed them both enough to keep going with the series. I started my reading very curious to see where the plot would go next. I was a bit disappointed with how Count Zero felt very unrelated to Neuromancer, so I was very interested to see what, if anything, Mona Lisa Overdrive would do to connect those stories.

Much like the second book in the series, Mona Lisa Overdrive follows several separate story threads that come together in the end of the novel. Instead of three stories, however, this time we have four. All four threads take place 8 years after the events of Count Zero, in Gibson's futuristic, cyberpunk world. Having this many perspectives going on at once makes the story messy and difficult to explain, but I will do my best to summarize.

One thread follows Mona, a teenage prostitute that bears a striking resemblance to a famous celebrity. Her boyfriend/pimp draws her into the main narrative by involving her in a plot to abduct Angie Mitchell, the celebrity she resembles.

Speaking of Angie Mitchell, another of the threads follows her. She is the same Angie from Count Zero, and in the eight years since the end of that novel, she has become the world's biggest actress. She still has the ability to jack into Cyberspace at will and this ability has allowed her to communicate with the Voodoo gods living in the Net periodically over the years. The plot to abduct her forms one of the major plot points of the novel.

Another thread follows Kumiko, the daughter of a Yakuza boss. At the beginning of the novel, her father sends her to London to shield her from a situation going on in Japan. In London, the people her father is using to mind her end up having their own suspicious agendas, which she picks up on almost immediately. She ends up teaming up with Sally Shears (who is actually Molly from Neuromancer) and gets drawn into the celebrity abduction plot.

The final thread follows Slick Henry, a reclusive artist living in an empty factory in a poisoned section of land in New Jersey. He wants nothing more than to live in solitude and work on creating his art (giant killer robots). However, his peace and quiet is disrupted when an acquaintance from his past shows up asking for a favor. Slick owes this guy, so he can't say no. The favor is to hide someone - a mysterious man unconscious on a stretcher hooked up to some sort of super-sophisticated computer (Bobby Newmark from Count Zero, as it turns out). He reluctantly agrees to this, then becomes drawn into a massive fight when people come looking for the computer Bobby's hooked into.

Much like in the previous books in the series, these storylines are complex and multilayered. Once again, I felt like I was always on the edge of being confused about what was going on. Following four different threads was a lot, and it was easy to forget details with all the constant switching around I was forced to do. By the time I would circle back around to a character, I would have the details of three other stories floating around in my brain. It would take a while to reorient myself to who I was reading about. That being said, I was still able to follow the story for the most part and was entertained throughout.

On a positive note, this novel did provide the connection I was looking for to the rest of the series. Characters from both of the previous novels appear again, and the existence of AIs in Cyberspace is examined more closely. Some explanation is offered for a lot of the confusing Voodoo stuff, as well as the motivations for the Tessier-Ashpool characters from Neuromancer. I especially enjoyed seeing Sally/Molly again, as she was my favorite character. She still kicks butt, in case you were wondering.

However, while Gibson did make an effort to clear up the vagueness and mystery from the previous two books in the series, it was all still a bit hazy for me. By the time I finished reading, I did not feel like everything came together in a satisfying way and I did not feel overly attached to any of the characters. I feel like Gibson's main pleasure in writing these novels was to play around in his cyberpunk world. To explore possibilities for future technologies and how people might be affected by new and highly immersive types of electronic experiences. Character development and a clear narrative aren't really his priorities. I believe he just wanted to put this crazy world down on paper and let people watch his characters play around in it. In that, he is very successful. I just wish the story was a bit tighter and the characters a bit more three dimensional.

I did enjoy reading Mona Lisa Overdrive and ultimately, I am happy to have finished reading The Sprawl Trilogy. It is certainly unlike any science fiction I had read before. William Gibson is highly imaginative and the genre owes a lot to the ideas he developed in these novels. That being said, Neuromancer was clearly the best book out of the bunch, and I would not say it is necessary to read all three books to be satisfied with the story. The explanations Gibson offers for his AI sentience plot points are never terribly clear, so it wouldn't be a big deal to leave some of the unanswered questions in Neuromancer a mystery. For those who enjoy exploring Gibson's gritty, weird world though, this trilogy is worth your time.


Challenge Tally
Classics Club (Sequel to List Book): 43/100
Finally in 2019: 10/6 Books Read - Complete!

Total Books Read in 2019: 21