The Mission Song, Spook Country

I'm a little behind with the book draft, as I finished John LeCarre's The Mission Song quite some time before the wedding, I think in early June. It was a really good one, though. One complaint I have about LeCarre (whom in general I adore) is how he sometimes takes everything away from you at the end, leaves not even a shred of anything good. This is especially true of the later stuff, The Constant Gardener, Absolute Friends. Both of which, don't get me wrong, I read avidly. But I couldn't be satisfied, because they were SUCH total downers. The Mission Song is really desperate and doesn't leave you much but it does leave you something. I found the main character interesting in his abilities and his flaws. The love affair was perhaps a little less convincing, but not bad either. I liked seeing LeCarre stretch to portray a biracial hero. It was a stretch, maybe not all the way convincing, but not bad either. Overall, I'd rate the book about like The Taylor of Panama, not quite up with my all-time favorites, the Smiley series and Single and Single. Yes, I've read nearly everything by LeCarre, though I'm still working through a few of the more obscure ones...

William Gibson's Spook Country, which I read slowly over the time I was in Hawaii and after I got back, was less inspired. I would say it's William Gibson phoning it in. That's not to say it wasn't pretty exciting in places, because the guy does really know how to tell a story. It's just that, well it had a few problems. One was thinness. None of the characters seemed really human. They were just collections of character traits and psychological ticks, which was especially disappointing in the characters you really wanted to care about, like Tito, Milgrim, and I guess Hollis to some extent. Lots of storylines going at the same time. They were juggled smoothly enough, but there was so little--even no--personal connection among them. They connected event-wise, plot-wise, but not in any human way, except superficially. That made them all seem solipsistic, locked into their individual and unconnecting worlds.

Biggest turn-offs: rockstar card was overplayed (I just don't care enough about made-up fans of made-up bands); the fascination with Google and wireless networks, which make the book feel dated before it's even dated--come on, it's science fiction, make some shit up; also, the spy stuff felt very unreal, especially compared to LeCarre. Of course, it's not really fair to compare Gibson out of his own territory to LeCarre in his own territory. But then again, Gibson ventured there and probably should have read more LeCarre (or Graham Greene) before doing so. Favorite bits: action sequences with the odd Cuban god-figures, and the Cuban-Chinese characters in general. It was a page-turner, but it really didn't measure up even to some of his other later stuff, like Pattern Recognition.