5 ms·
Opinions will differ, of course. Personally, I think his Bigend Trilogy is every bit the equal of his Sprawl Trilogy. Extraordinarily perceptive about the cont
by waterlesscloud 12y ago
Opinions will differ, of course.
Personally, I think his Bigend Trilogy is every bit the equal of his Sprawl Trilogy. Extraordinarily perceptive about the contemporary world and the way our social lives have changed over the last 15 years, in both scope and in experience.
I'm not crazy about his Bridge Trilogy, though it has its moments. Overall, I think those were his weakest books.
The Peripheral also sort of underwhelmed me. I liked the near-ish future, with the look at how hopeless redneck-ville would be affected by technological and economic trends. There's a mix of the past and the present (our present and our future) in those bits that plays quite nicely and feels very real. His far-future London, though, felt very under-imagined. I don't think it went far enough. I also think he tried something interesting with hicks being just as dangerous as the sophisticates, but it didn't quite gel the way I think he meant it too. Still, it's not a bad book, it's just not as good as I'd hoped.
- crucini 12y agoOK, I need to give the Bigend Trilogy a try. The Bridge books were the end of the road for me. If they're just a temporary low spot, I'll keep going.
- arkem 12y agoI definitely think the Bigend Trilogy is as strong as the Sprawl Trilogy. Pattern Recognition and Neuromancer are my two favorite of his novels. Sadly however, I'm having trouble with The Peripheral (his latest), maybe it'll grab me but it has yet to do so.
- tedks 12y agoThe Blue Ant/Bigend trilogy is basically the Sprawl trilogy rewritten in the present day.
- anigbrowl 12y agoYeah. They're quite good, definitely better than the Bridge novels, although I read those again recently and they were better than I remembered. He still leans a bit too heavily on contextual striptease, though.
- orbitingpluto 12y agoThe Bigend trilogy is my favourite. I was actually hoping for another novel in the series. Something along how everything inevitably goes to hell when Bigend has his finger on the pulse of everything and the rest of the world has to "grind the rivets down on their Levi's" to get out from under his thumb.