William Gibson - All Tomorrow's Parties

Readable, punchy, engaging, literate, and often darkly poetic - but lacking the intangible 'edge' and fully-realised complexity of Neuromancer or some of Gibson's short stories that I've read in the past. All Tomorrow's Parties is set in a world closer to our own - while the characteristic hi-tech stylings are present, they're not as advanced as in his earlier work. Presumably this was a conscious choice on Gibson's part, as is the way in which characters now recur - Laney, Rydell, Yamazaki, Rei Toei, and possibly one or two others appeared in Idoru, and I think there was one before that, Virtual Light, which I haven't read, also working with (parts of) the same crew. I liked the concept of 'nodal points' - an idea which I've used myself for a while now (though I'm not sure whether I hit upon it on my own, or adopted it from somewhere else) - but didn't find it to be very satisfyingly developed in this novel. When all's said and done, though, it's still Gibson, and so still very good.