number63liveblogs

[number63liveblogs]

Mona Lisa Overdrive: Ten

“The LF, Kid called it. Called him the Count, called that his LF.”

Clearly LF stands for something, but I have no idea what. Maybe “life” something? It seems to be keeping Bobby alive, if nothing else. Whatever it is, it’s deliberately being kept hidden from the reader, so the answer can’t be that it’s just keeping Bobby from not dying.

The… time perception fuckery and memory erasure technology that they use against criminals sounds absolutely horrible. And I don’t know if it’s just a neat world building detail that the author came up with because Slick is the first criminal we see who’s gotten any kind of a punishment for his crimes (other than being killed by whoever was the victim of the crime) or if it will become relevant later. After all, we don’t know what’s going on with Bobby, and in some cases not remembering what happened can be a blessing.

Gentry’s burgeoning obsession could end up being a really good or a really bad thing. On one hand, if he’s being… respectful and doing things that won’t interfere with whatever’s going on with Bobby, it could be an avenue of giving the readers answers in a way that feels satisfying while letting the timeline move forward.

But if he’s more interested in figuring out what the machine is than keeping Bobby alive, there’s a lot of damage that he could do.

[number63liveblogs]

Mona Lisa Overdrive: Nine

“He killed my mother,” she blurted[.]

Poor child. I still think there’s enough crumbs here that it would make sense that Kumiko is wrong about her father, but her learning independence when her father sends her away and finally rising against her father would also make a good story, so I’m in no way married to that idea.

“There’s another angle,” he said, “that came up today. They want it to look as though she’s been taken out.” “What?” “They want it to look as though we’ve killed her.”

Uh-huh. See, the first thing Kumiko is going to think is that whoever “they” are, they want Swain to fake Kumiko’s death. But we just saw in the previous chapter that Mona is needed for something where it’s important that she looks like Angie while she has no experience in show business.

What I’m saying is that there’s a real possibility that maybe someone wants Swain to fake Angie’s death. If it is Angie, there’s a possibility that the whole thing would be happening with her consent. Hell, even if it turns out that they’re talking about Kumiko it could be something that “they” want done for Kumiko’s own wellbeing. They were talking about faking her death after all.

 I just hope that she doesn’t overreact because of what she heard here, she should definitely keep the fact that her room is bugged in mind but not, for example, run into the night.

[number63liveblogs]

Mona Lisa Overdrive: Eight

Well, she didn’t have a last name herself, unless you counted Lisa, and that was more like having two first ones.

Interestingly Mona is the character who shares a name with the title of the book, the same way Bobby was in the previous book. I’m not going to read that much into it, as didn’t end up being overwhelmingly the most important character in the book or anything.

I do wonder if she’s in-universe deliberately named after the famous artwork. If she is, she doesn’t seem to know about it, but it’s very much possible that she has never had the chance to talk to her parents about her name.

It looks like the storylines of the characters are going to intersect much earlier than they did in the previous book, as whatever assignment Mona is being sent on is clearly connected to how she looks very much like Angie. Although it is possible that they’re going to hang out in the same location or near each other, but never interact.

I do wonder who scouted Mona. Like, how did they find out that she looks like Angie, and she’ll be able to do whatever it is they need her for. Body double for sex scenes would be the most obvious answer, considering that Mona does sex work, but that doesn’t sound like something that would lead to an exiting cyberpunk plot.

[number63liveblogs]

Mona Lisa Overdrive: Seven

Based on Angie’s feelings in the first chapter, I was expecting her to be held less voluntarily. Of course, she’s most likely seen more as an asset than as a human being, considering how Turner remembered his time as a bodyguard to a starlet, but there’s still a way that you can spin what’s happening as the production company keeping their star safe instead of blatant kidnapping,

I find Tessier-Ashpool being back interesting. In the previous book an AI fragment of Neuromancer and Wintermute had taken one of their space stations over, and the company had fallen apart otherwise, so my guess would be that an AI fragment or a few of them is holding most of the Tessier-Ashpool assets.

That should be good for Angie, right? We didn’t see how the majority of the Ais acting as lua actually see humans, but the actions of all the AIs we saw were basically benevolent or neutral towards the humans they were in extended contact with. And Angie, too has seemed to see the AIs in a positive light.

Angie also knows that Bobby did whatever caused his coma out of his own volition, so it might take a while before she gets to the point where she’ll start taking steps to find out what he went and what happened to him.

[number63liveblogs]

Mona Lisa Overdrive: Six

Oh wow, the book isn’t keeping the comatose mad being Bobby a secret at all. It did come to my mind that that was an option, I just would have expected it to be a mystery.

Of course, now the mystery is more about what happened to him. It looks like he did manage to become a cowboy, just the way he always wanted, so it’s possible that he got mixed up in some shady business. Kid Afrika doesn’t seem to be the most legitimate person to work with, and somehow he ended up with Bobby in his possession.

Angie didn’t talk about Bobby much in her first chapter, but that might have been to preserve the reveal to this chapter. It could also be that she doesn’t know what happened to him. Hell, it could be that she doesn’t know that something’s wrong, if he’s supposed to be doing something somewhere.

Cherry has only been with Bobby for a week, and we don’t know how long it took Kid Afrika to find her, whatever put Bobby into a coma could have just happened. And considering that Cherry and Slick don’t seem to be in a position to find out much, it would make sense for Angie’s storyline to be the one to tell us what happened to Bobby.

The question is: what is this storyline going to be about, then?

[number63liveblogs]

Mona Lisa Overdrive: Five

Poor Kumiko, she’s basically lost her whole family, as her mother killed herself and her father sent her away.

We don’t know what her relationship with her parents was like, other than her mother’s death has hit her hard, but considering that it’s her mother and how young she is, they could have had a complicated or distant relationship and it would still make sense for her mother’s suicide to be hard for Kumiko.

It’s also possible that everything we hear about her father here is true, that she was sent away because the yakuza is having internal conflicts, but I think it’s equally possible that her father wanted to get rid of her because she’s a painful reminder of his dead wife or because he’ll turn out to be evil or something.

But then again, her mother wasn’t Japanese, which to me would indicate that her parents married out of love. Japanese culture is pretty xenophobic, so while marriages where your partner is more or less chosen by your parents are common I wouldn’t expect someone marrying a foreigner be one of those. My guess is that Kumiko’s father genuinely loved her mother, and he’s incapable of communicating the hurt he feels about her death to Kumiko.

[number63liveblogs]

Mona Lisa Overdrive: Four

Oof. If I have my reservations about the author writing a Japanese character, I’m definitely going to have reservations about him writing a sex worker. Honestly, I’m going to be very surprised if Mona ends up being handled with respect.

I mean, even in this first chapter we get a sex scene with her where she feels uncomfortable throughout the whole thing. And like… of course you can write about sex workers who are victimized, cyberpunk worlds are just the kind of world where basically nobody’s having a good time, but she needs to have some other attributes too.

I recognize that I’m most likely being somewhat harsh, considering that none of the new characters have gotten that much depth in their first chapters. Mona just falls straight into an extremely tired trope, and I’m already bored with it.

At least it looks like she’ll be changing scenery soon, so this might just have been a chapter to show what her life was like before whatever will happen to her in this book.

Let’s hope that she’ll have some other function in the story, other than to suffer and to offer the author a chance to write sex scenes and of course have her suffer in a sex scene.

[number63liveblogs]

Mona Lisa Overdrive: Three

Well, I did say that I was expecting Angie to cameo in this book. Her becoming a point of view character was unexpected.

It means that we have a clear timeline on where we are compared to the previous book, and the storylines are no doubt going to be way more connected than the first two books. That’s actually pretty common in trilogies, the first book is more self-contained because it’s easier to sell a book that has an ending, and usually when the second book is written it’s clear that a third book is going to happen so there’s no danger of being unable to finish the series.

It's also possible that the author just happened to have an idea that needed Angie and her ability to talk to the Ais. I bet he already knew that Angie would be a recurring character, but I can’t help but to notice that Bobby was mentioned in this chapter but he didn’t appear on page. So, was introducing a new point of view character a way to hide something about Bobby or his thoughts? Maybe he already had something going on that would have been a spoiler for his book or too much of a sequel hook.

[number63liveblogs]

Mona Lisa Overdrive: Two

Speaking of racism. And like, sometimes you want to depict racism in your story, that’s a legitimate thing to do. That doesn’t mean that I need to like reading about it. I really hope that Little Bird isn’t going to be a central character, because I don’t want to either watch her be racist repeatedly or see an antiracist arc in my cyberpunk story about AIs and whatever’s going on with the unconscious guy.

Speaking of the guy, I be that he’s going to be the central point in Slick’s point of view chapters, if he becomes a recurring point of view character. I also can’t help but to notice that we learn very little about him. So, most likely he’ll be someone who’s introduced in another storyline, so that when we learn who he is it will actually be a reveal. That, or he’ll be a returning character from one of the previous books.

He's also someone who could be connected to the inevitable Ais, once they show up. We don’t know what the fragments are currently doing or how long a time skip (if any) there has been since the end of the last book. The author could always introduced new fantastical technology and just say that it has been thirty years and technology marches on.

[number63liveblogs]

Mona Lisa Overdrive: One

Okay, new book! Considering that the Ais were the connection between the two previous books, my first instinct is to try to guess where the Ais will turn up here. I can’t see them anywhere in the first chapter, but that makes sense as the point of the chapter seems to be to introduce Kumiko and her circumstances.

On one hand, considering the heavy Japanese influence that the setting has, having a Japanese point of view character makes sense, but on the other hand the author has been racist enough that I’m bracing myself for some weird blunders. But then again, I felt like the voodoo religion in the previous book felt like it was handled with at least medium amount of care, so maybe the author is capable of incorporating other cultures into his setting without too much racism.

But you do have to remember that as an European anime fan I have much more knowledge of the Japanese culture than African American diaspora religions.

In any case, Kumiko is a newcomer to London, so her point of view chapters can be used to explain parts of the world building that would be difficult to incorporate to the point of view of someone to whom everything is normal as usual, so that should be fun.

[number63liveblogs]

Thoughts on Count Zero

I liked this book more than the previous one. Funnily enough, even though there were three point of view characters and all of them had storylines that only interacted with each other at the end, the book felt more coherent than the previous one.

I that’s because the world was already established in the previous book, so less time was taken just showing the reader cool things that the author came up with, and more focus was on the characters and the story.

That could also be because the genre of cyberpunk was more established during the few year between the first and second book and the author was able to rely more on genre convention. For example, because of Virek and the fact that Mitchell was being extracted from an abusive contract, the theme of money corrupting everything felt like it was present all the time instead of jumping in at the end like in the previous book.

I’d say my only complaint is that I would have wanted Turner’s preparations for extracting Mitchell to have fewer steps and take fewer chapters, and on the other hand Marly’s search for the box maker felt really rushed when she just found out where it was and then immediately flew there. It felt like something that Virek should have been able to figure out by himself.

[number63liveblogs]

Count Zero: Thirty Six

I take it back, Turner didn’t get the shortest stick of the cast, he got the same kind of a happy ending as all other main characters. It really makes sense, come to think of it: he was already thinking of quitting at the beginning of the book when Conroy came to fetch him. So, this is just him trying again and very clearly succeeding, as he’s managed to have a seven year old child.

I was really not expecting him to go back to Sally, based on what their relationship was during the short while they had together. On the other hand, it’s very easy to extrapolate that Rudy’s death affected them both deeply and they bonded over that, especially when he’s brought up several times during this chapter. And while the previous chapter explicitly happened two years after everything went down, we don’t know how long Turner and Sally waited before they had their son.

So yeah, the moral of the story is that if you do drugs you’ll get a bittersweet ending where your girlfriend leaves you, and if you don’t you get a happy ending with the career you always wanted or a girlfriend, depending on your gender.

[number63liveblogs]

Count Zero: Thirty Five

Interesting choice, to have the ending of Angie’s and Bobby’s story be told from the point of view of a character who has only been mentioned before in the story. It feels kind of... maybe bashful, like the author wants to hide the deeper feelings and interactions that the characters have, but not because he’s trying to keep a secret – more like he’s trying to give the characters some privacy.

Interestingly Beauvoir is nowhere to be seen, so it looks like it really was just a short while that they spent together. The thing I’m most surprised about is that Angie and Bobby both have careers that have nothing to do with the matrix. It’s made clear that Bobby at least is still interested enough in it that he’s taking a cyberspace deck everywhere with him, but we know nothing of what happened to Angie’s implants and if she’s still capable of being in contact with the AI fragments.

I think giving her a career in the media sets her up as having a cameo on the next book, the same way Tessier-Ashpools and their downfall was referenced several times in this book. It wouldn’t even be difficult to have Bobby incorporated in there, as he appears to be both her boyfriend and her bodyguard.

[number63liveblogs]

Count Zero: Thirty Four

Things are winding down, and this time things seem to be heading towards a more unambiguously happy ending than last time. Turner’s the one who appears to have drawn the shortest stick, his brother is dead and while he’s able to go back to his old life it’s still the life of a mercenary. But he didn’t burn any bridges, and I wouldn’t see any reason why he wouldn’t be able to get work after this considering that his reputation has always been loyalty towards whoever he’s working for at the moment.

On the other hand, Bobby and Angie are moving on in their lives in a way that could easily be better for them. Angie’s father is dead, yes, but she’s no longer under a restrictive program and she has the possibility of reconnecting with her mother if she wants to. At this point I’m also almost certain that the members of the voodoo cult are capable of not being weird towards her, even if they worship her on some level.

And Bobby heard that his mother is alive, which means that he had the chance of going home if he wanted to. It means that going with Beauvoir and Angie is a choice, instead of something he does because he has nowhere else to go.

[number63liveblogs]

Count Zero: Thirty Three

Huh, I kind of assumed that Paco was killed too. Apparently not, instead he had to tell Marly that whatever he was willing to kill for an hour ago is now a moot point. Virek really should have respected the AI more as a person, maybe then this wouldn’t have happened.

From Marly’s point of view it all ended pretty anti-climatically. But then again, she doesn’t have to go back to her previous life, she still has a whole bunch of money left from what Virek was paying her (especially when she did, in fact, find the box maker for him) and it looks like the AI likes her enough to talk to her and use her things for art.

On the other hand, we have an example of someone who hangs out with the AI in the Wig, and that isn’t a healthy way for someone to live. On the other hand, the voodoo religion seems like a perfectly fine way to interact with the AIs, so it’s definitely possible that Marly will build a better version of the life she used to have, this time with AIs and money. Hell, depending on what the AI and the Wig want, she could become their next contact person of Earth.

[number63liveblogs]

Count Zero: Thirty Two

“Bobby, my advice to you is just take it like it comes. She’s one thing to me, maybe something different to Jackie. To you, she’s just a scared kid.[“]

I think it’s quite uncommon to see people with this kind of an outlook regarding their religion in fiction, although that might be coloured by what kind of fiction I tend to read (this blog has a pretty unbiased sampling regarding what I tend to gravitate to). In any case, Beauvoir thinking of Angie like could point to him being aware that the loa are in fact AIs, and I’m almost certain that if he doesn’t already know it he’s going to be okay with it if he hears about it.

Bobby has finally been taken as a loa’s horse. After Jackie’s death I for a moment assumed that he would be taking her place, but apparently not. That would have given Jackie’s death a narrative reason to happen, but then again sometimes people just die when powerful entities like the AIs and Virek go against each other for no reason.

I was not expecting Bobby’s storyline be the one where Virek was killed, considering that Bobby has had the least contact with him, but then again someone Virek doesn’t know about being his downfall makes sense.

Also, it looks like Bobby is attracted to Angie now that he’s seen her in the real life, and Jackie might have gotten killed to make space for that romance, if that’s the direction that the book wants to go to.

[number63liveblogs]

Count Zero: Thirty One

[—]Once, for a brilliant time, time without duration, I was everywhere as well . . . But the bright time broke. The mirror was flawed.

On one hand I really want to know what happened to the combined Neuromancer and Wintermute for it to fragment like this, but on the other hand it kind of makes more thematic sense for the AIs to be incomprehensible, even to the reader. They also aren’t human and don’t have to work according to human logic, so the explanation might not even be satisfying from a narrative point of view.

—No. He imagines that he can translate himself, code his personality into my fabric. He yearns to be what I once was.

You know, I just remembered that the setting has the technology to upload at least some version of a human like we saw in the last book. But that isn’t enough for Virek, isn’t it, he wants to be more than human, instead of the way that normal uploads are seen as less than human.

 Interestingly, Paco still talks to the humans on the station, instead of the AI whose power he’s trying to harness. I don’t think he comprehends how much of a person the AI is, considering that I’m absolutely certain that if the AI wanted Virek to come inside he would already be there.

It’s easy to see that that will be his downfall.