My favorite part about William Gibson’s writing is his world building. He is truly a visionary, an understatement about the guy who envisioned The Matrix. What kept me getting back to The Peripheral was Gibson’s unique take on how humans would eventually merge with technology and the resulting fragmentation of society. In Neuromancer the world is chaotically dystopian, in The Peripheral the world is forlornly so.

I find Gibson’s writing style intriguing, very synesthetic and schizophrenic. Nothing is introduced, sentences aren’t grammatically correct, or even complete for that matter. Verbs are used as nouns; colors are used as tastes and sounds. You spend the first few chapters learning his vocabulary and only then are able to keep up with the plot. I almost always have to read his books twice to understand them.

I any other positive thing to say about this novel. I have read Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy and even there the only book I liked was the first one. They all feel very repetitive and underdeveloped. His humans don’t feel like humans in this world. His books are written for video game NPCs. I’m probably not going to read any other books by him.