Mona is a young girl with a murky past and an uncertain future whose life is turned upside down when her pimp sells her to a plastic surgeon in New York and overnight she’s turned into someone else.

Angie Mitchell is a famous Hollywood Sense/Net star with a special talent. And despite the efforts of studio bosses to keep her in ignorance, Angie’s started remembering things. Soon she’ll discover who she really is… and why she doesn’t need a deck in order to enter cyberspace.

From inside the matrix, plots are set in motion and human beings are being played like pieces on a board. And behind the intrigue lurks the shadowy Yazuka, the powerful Japanese underworld, whose leaders ruthlessly manipulate people and events to suit their own purposes.

Or so they think…

By William Gibson, initially published by Victor Gollacz Ltd in 1988 (ISBN 0-553-05250-0).

Arsouyes’ opinion

😡 tbowan

Mona Lisa overdrive is the last episode of the series, and brings together the events and characters of the previous episodes towards a common ending to explain and close the plots. Said like that, you probably want to start reading.

But we become disillusioned very quickly as it is over and over again the same story: the same choppy writing tics that make reading extremely painful, the same narrative structure made of helpless sloshing heroes and the same deus ex machina to transform a techno-thriller that started almost well in an inexplicable happy end.

Special mention to the explicit without conclusion which closes the epilogue, and the series. Supposed to open on new perspectives, it could have encouraged to produce and read a next volume if it had not been as ridiculous as Higlander 2 (The Return).

I read it because of Zeigarnik effect and only recommend it if you are fan of cyberpunk and looking for a story in the mood. Do not try to understand anything there, it will spoil your pleasure.

Affiliation

• The book at Les Libraires