Spook Country

By: William Gibson

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

Tito is in his early 20s. Born in Cuba, he speaks fluent Russian, lives in one room in a NoLita warehouse, and does delicate jobs involving information transfer.

Hollis Henry is an investigative journalist, on assignment from a magazine called Node. Node doesn't exist yet, which is fine; she's used to that. But it seems to be actively blocking the kind of buzz that magazines normally cultivate before they start up. Really actively blocking it. It's odd, even a little scary, if Hollis lets herself think about it much - which she doesn't. She can't afford to.

Milgrim is a junkie. A high-end junkie, hooked on prescription antianxiety drugs. Milgrim figures he wouldn't survive 24 hours if Brown, the mystery man who saved him from a misunderstanding with his dealer, ever stopped supplying those little bubble packs. What exactly Brown is up to Milgrim can't say, but it seems to be military in nature. At least, Milgrim's very nuanced Russian would seem to be a big part of it, as would breaking into locked rooms.

Bobby Chombo is a "producer" and an enigma. In his day job, Bobby is a troubleshooter for manufacturers of military navigation equipment. He refuses to sleep in the same place twice. He meets no one. Hollis Henry has been told to find him.

©2007 William Gibson (P)2007 Penguin Audio, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. and Books on Tape. All rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“Part thriller, part spy novel, part speculative fiction, Gibson’s provocative work is like nothing you have ever read before.” (Library Journal)

"Set in the same high-tech present day as Pattern Recognition, Gibson’s fine ninth novel offers startling insights into our paranoid and often fragmented postmodern world....Compelling characters and crisp action sequences, plus the author’s trademark metaphoric language, help make this one of Gibson’s best.” (Publishers Weekly [starred review])

"Gibson excels as usual in creating an off-kilter atmosphere of vague menace.” (Kirkus Reviews)

UGHHH 2 !

I'm in complete agreement with Cindy. Nowhere in the first three plus hours have I recognized anything remotely akin to a plot. From the very first sentence, I've been trying to get involved with someone in this dis-jointed amalgam of characters and have been thwarted at each chapters end. This may be the worst piece of writing I have ever laid down good money for. Just glad to see SOMEONE can put a value on it ! Though I hasten to think some people have too much spare reading time on their hands.

Bad Narration

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Robertson Dean?

The main character is a woman, so a woman should have read the book. Mr. Dean's inability to pronounce the brand name Adidas (he pronounced it AH-dee-dahs instead of uh-DEE-as) took me right out of the story.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

This is a great story ruined as a listening experience by bad choice of narrator and lack of editorial oversight.

Terrible reading

I'm a huge Gibson fan and am quite excited to read his new series. Unfortunately, I won't be listening to it until a new reading is done.

The actor for this book overemphasizes all sentences, with understandable volume modulation, and it's near impossible to distiguish different characters in the book. His meter is also quite strange. Because of all this, I couldn't get through more than 60 minutes of the book, constantly being distracted by the actor, unable to focus on the story.

I'm quite upset that I've wasted a book credit on this, and even more upset that I won't be able to listen this book from my favorite author.

really confusing

not a good listen. hard to follow and seems like it goes noware. i would not recomend this listen

Booring

I found "Spook Country" so booring I could not finish it.

Boring and a disappointing ending

This novel was disappointing. I found that the final ending was really a let down. All this excitement over something that was ultimately mundane if you ask me. And the merging of the different story lines was awkward at best. The characters all have interesting starts, but the just kind of go nowhere. The references to pop and geek culture were entirely gratuitous --- especially the story about chombo. Give me a break! I'm really sorry I wasted a credit on this one.

Tried to enjoy it

I really have enjoyed Gibsons older stuff but with Pattern Recognition and even more with Spook Country the guy just meanders too much. I'm half way through and I find I don't really care about any of the characters, don't really understand the plot and am having a really tough time hanging in there. Gibson's writing continues to be unique and often engaging but it keeps leading nowhere in this story. Also the plain old modern setting isn't nearly as exciting as the bleak future stuff in my opinion. William, if you're reading this I'm sorry man... I just don't get it.

When a reader ruins a great book.

Like the voice of a man who got the surgery, and thinks he's a woman. I couldn't stand the castrate falsetto. I've tried to finish this f-ckin' thing three times now, but the f-ckin' reader, Robertson Dean, ruins it every f-ckin' time.

I'm deleting the audio book from my device yet again. If I can find _anyone_ else performing this, I'll buy it and try to wash the exquisitely horrible taste of Mr. Dean's voice out of my ears.

I mean bad. Pus-filled bleeding eyeball-bad. Mr. Dean has ruined one of my all time favorite books. I am angry and sad.