Agency

By: William Gibson

Narrated by: Lorelei King

Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

An instant New York Times best seller

"One of the most visionary, original, and quietly influential writers currently working" (The Boston Globe) returns with a sharply imagined follow-up to the New York Times best-selling The Peripheral.

William Gibson has trained his eye on the future for decades, ever since coining the term "cyberspace" and then popularizing it in his classic speculative novel Neuromancer in the early 1980s. Cory Doctorow raved that The Peripheral is "spectacular, a piece of trenchant, far-future speculation that features all the eyeball kicks of Neuromancer." Now, Gibson is back with Agency - a science-fiction thriller heavily influenced by our most current events.

Verity Jane, gifted app whisperer, takes a job as the beta tester for a new product: a digital assistant, accessed through a pair of ordinary-looking glasses. "Eunice", the disarmingly human AI in the glasses, manifests a face, a fragmentary past, and a canny grasp of combat strategy. Realizing that her cryptic new employers don’t yet know how powerful and valuable Eunice is, Verity instinctively decides that it’s best they don’t.

Meanwhile, a century ahead in London, in a different time line entirely, Wilf Netherton works amid plutocrats and plunderers, survivors of the slow and steady apocalypse known as the jackpot. His boss, the enigmatic Ainsley Lowbeer, can look into alternate pasts and nudge their ultimate directions. Verity and Eunice are her current project. Wilf can see what Verity and Eunice can’t: their own version of the jackpot, just around the corner, and the roles they both may play in it.

©2018 William Gibson (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Engaging, thought-provoking and delightful... [Gibson] can always be counted on to show us our contemporary milieu rendered magical by his unique insights, and a future rendered inhabitable by his wild yet disciplined imagination." (The Washington Post)

"Superb... Each sentence is a hand-turned marvel of compact characterization, world-building and sardonic wit, all used to illuminate his vivid milieus.... Gibson has an inexhaustible supply of tricks, new stories and new ways of telling them that make him the most consistent predictor of our present, contextualizer of our pasts and presager of our possible futures." (Los Angeles Times)

"An immersive thriller, fueled by an intelligent, empathetic imagination." (The Boston Globe)

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the thinnest story Gibson has written in a while. Really good writing, but still not much happens.

It’s alright

This story does not have the heart or the danger of the previous iteration. It reads like a quest log of a mildly entertaining video game. Go here to do that now go here to do that then go back to where you started and then the novel ended.

I guess my final thought was, ok, well I guess it’s over then.

There are a couple minor detracting quirks, but...

...I'm still sorta in love with it. If you haven't read the Peripheral, read that first.

There's an emotional softness, here, that doesn't exist in Gibson's early novels. The latter of which were, as is "requisite" of cyberpunk, addictively and intriguingly gritty.

Don't get me wrong. Agency has grit. It has a great pace, and artful unfolding of narrative and character development. Yet it's paired with sentimental warmth you start to see in the Blue Ant series.

It's badass, it's fun, and you probably won't want it to end.

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Other critical reviews I've read aren't wrong. They have valid points. But, they're kinda hyperbolic, at the same time. What can you say? Gibson has set the bar high for himself, over the past few decades.
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But it's still Gibson It the best of ways.

I kept waiting for the plot twist...

that never came. I was expecting some kind of new interesting twist, and kept looking for it until the very end.

it is a good story it is a good story if you enjoy it for what it is. but it's not an epic Gibson.

this is incomparable, the gold standard

Having listened the prior work where this world was built, I was ready for Agency. It did not disappoint in the least. like all Gibson novels, one must not let themselves be distracted for fear of missing a critical reference or detail. I found myself, well into the book, going back and listening to the first few chapters to make sure I understood what I thought I understood. Even that was a pleasure and I could have just reread the rest of it through to the end. I hope there's something more coming from Sir Gibson. I haven't heard of him being granted the use of Sir but that should happen.

A nice sequel

This return to the world(s) of the Peripheral is a solid addition to the Gibson ouvre. It may not be his best work, but then again an average Gibson is something most authors could only aspire to.
Like with the Peripheral I took a while to get into the story but once I was keyed into the various contexts I was along for the ride. His characters are very well developed and the ideas flow thick and fast. My only complaint is that it felt a teeny bit predetermined - I never felt there was any real danger.
I felt the narration was absolutely outstanding, with great voice work clearly distinguishing all the players
Overall I recommend, but much better if you have read the Peripheral first

A rambling plot that never seems to go anywhere.

I generally love Gibson's work, but this one came off as a shaggy dog story with little plot development. Just couldn't finish it.

Outstanding voice acting

Story a bit weak for Gibson or else I missed the deepest bits. But the voice acting by Lorelei King was exceptional and the characters fun.

I love this series

Acting is superb. The universe is such a neat concept. Loved the story but it was too predictable.

Good ideas, but relatively flat plot

First of all, William Gibson is one of my favorite authors and so I hold his work to a high bar. I listened straight through Peripheral, which was fantastic, into Agency. While I love the characters and concept of these books, I found that the plot of Agency felt more like it was on rails. Both of the "protagonists" are essentially just along for the ride, ironically lacking any agency in the progression of the plot. This was likely an intentional move by Gibson, demonstrating the point of mechanations beyond out understanding and control moving our world around us, but unfortunately the conflict of the story fell flat as a result. The "enemies" feel inept, and non-threatening, with the stakes never feeling high enough to be emotionally compelling. The benevolent actors feel overpowered. Overall the flavor was decent, but the ride was more kiddie-coaster than Rollercoaster.

The performance was excellent, which helps make the whole book enjoyable, if not my favorite.