Washington Post Book World
Neuromancer made Gibson famous; Idoru cements that fame.
New York Times Book Review
An intoxicating stylist.
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
The founding father of cyberpunk again returns to the techno-decadent 21st century mapped in his other major works (Virtual Light, Neuromancer, etc.). As usual, Gibson offers a richly imagined tale that finds semi-innocents wading hip-deep into trouble. Colin Laney has taken a job in Japan to escape the revenge of his former employer, Slitscan, a kind of corporate gossip-mongerer on the Net that he has crossed out of scruples. Meanwhile, Chia Pet McKenzie is active in the fan clubs for Lo/Rez, a Japanese superstar rock duo; while visiting Japan to investigate some new rumors about the group, she is used to smuggle illegal nanoware to the Russian criminal underground. Both Laney and Chia get caught up in the intrigues swirling about the plans of Rez, one half of the band, to marry Rei Toei, an "idoru" (idol) who exists only in virtual reality. Gibson excels here in creating a warped but comprehensible future saturated with logical yet unexpected technologies. His settings are brilliantly realized, from high-tech hotel rooms and airplanes to the infamous Walled City of Kowloon. The pacing is slower than Virtual Light, but Gibson exhibits his greatest strength: intense speculation, expressed in dramatic form, about the near-term evolution and merging of cultural, social and technological trends, and how they affect character. Dark and disturbing, this novel represents no new departure for Gibson, but a further accretion of the insights that have made him the most precise, and perhaps the most prescient, visionary working in SF today. 100,000 first printing; $100,000 ad/promo; author tour. (Sept.)
Library Journal
Colin Laney has a gift very much in demand. He can see well-hidden secrets through "nodal points" in the digital wake of commerce. In the not-so-distant future, fame and fortune and their analogs, scandal and ruin, are the true binding agents in a fractured, ungovernable world. Fired from his television tabloid job for an indiscretion, Laney is hired by the manager of the superpopular band Lo/Rez to go to post-earthquake Tokyo and divine the meaning behind singer Lo's intention to marry an idorua sort of a semi-sentient hologram. In alternating chapters, Chia, deeply involved in the Seattle chapter of the Lo/Rez fan club, picks up word of Lo's intentions over a computer network and is sent to investigate. On the way, she acts as the unwitting mule for a smuggler and winds up holding some very dangerous information. Though the plotting is weak and obvious, Gibson's writing is thick with atmosphere, dislocating the reader with a future that is both familiar and unsettling. Gibson's legion of fans will enjoy this fine sf thriller. For all fiction collections.Adam Mazmanian, "Library Journal"
Poppy Z. Brite
Gibson's style is vivid, graceful, and dense at the same time. Idoru moves faster than the Road Runner on crack. A wonderful story. Don't pass it up -- even if you don't own a computer.
-- The Village Voice
From the Publisher
Idoru induces reader anxiety, an almost hurtful need to jack into the next page...Every word is where it should be—lean, evocative, tense. Popular culture is William Gibson’s playground. Enjoy the ride.”—Wired
“Idoru is a prophecy, a prayer for information baths that never drown the supplicant. It is also a text on paper, beautifully written, dense with metaphors that open the eyes to the new, dreamlike, intensely imagined, deeply plausible. It is a profoundly cunning advertisement for a world whose enclosed spaces—and infinite domains within the skull—we had better be prepared to join.”—The Washington Post Book World
“Gibson’s vision is disturbing, his speculation brilliant and his prose immaculate, cementing his reputation as the premier visionary working in SF today.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Gibson envisions a future in which the lines between the virtual and the actual are terminally blurred. How ‘real’ are today's celebrities?...What will happen when the Web allows anyone—anyone at all—to be a star? With characteristic brilliance, the writer who invented the word cyberspace looks for answers.”—Rolling Stone
“Gibson remains, like Chandler, an intoxicating stylist...Clever and provocative scenery...vivid, slangy prose. Chia is one of his most winning creations.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Spooky...[Idoru is] a sharp satire on the uses and abuses of technology and has much to tell us about the dangerous path science has laid out for us.”—Baltimore Sun
“Gibson's trademark of high-tech pyrotechnics and dark psychological comedy is in evidence throughout Idoru, and his characters are as compelling as ever. Gibson’s novel should come with a warning label: Objects in novel may be closer than they appear.”—Time Out
