William Gibson's latest novel, Spook Country is awesome. Not as frantic or kinetic as Pattern Recognition or All Tomorrow's Parties, but Gibson sticks with the gritty textures and environments-as-characters feel while the characters themselves seem ephemeral and purposefully incomplete.
You never fully understand what's going on in a Gibson story... and this is no exception. Three characters wind their way through the novel: Hollis, a former 90's alternative rock singer. Milgrim is a homeless drug addict pulled along for the ride because he can translate an obscure dialect of Russian. Tito is part of the family that uses this dialect along with "systema," a strange mix of religion and KGB spycraft.
Not Gibson's best novel -- that would go to the brilliant Pattern Recognition in my book -- but kick ass nonetheless. And it's extremely cool that the three subplots converge in Gibson's native Vancouver, a city he describes as "how American cities look on television."
Oddly, for a sci-fi author (the guy that coined "cyberspace"), it takes place in the very recent past of 2006. Gibson once said that "The future has arrived, it's just not evenly distributed." One wonders if the future has caught up with Gibson.
Very highly recommended.
http://www.amazon.com/Spook-Country-William-Gibson/dp/0399154302/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-7616722-5171813?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191335843&sr=8-1
