All Tomorrow's Parties

By: William Gibson

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis

Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

Rydell is on his way back to near-future San Francisco. A stint as a security man in an all-night Los Angeles convenience store has convinced him his career is going nowhere, but his friend, Laney, phoning from Tokyo, says there's more interesting work for him in Northern California. And there is, although it will eventually involve his former girlfriend, a Taoist assassin, the secrets Laney has been hacking out of the depths of DatAmerica, the CEO of the PR firm that secretly runs the world, and the apocalyptic technological transformation of, well, everything.

William Gibson's new novel, set in the soon-to-be-fact world of Virtual Light and Idoru, completes a stunning, brilliantly imagined trilogy about the post-Net world.

©1999 William Gibson (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Best production, great listening experience

Thank you for the great narration, Jonathan Davis. I can't image how you accomplished such a great listen; is very enjoyable.
I ended up enjoying this book the most of the trilogy. I've read "All Tomorrow's Parties" a couple of times, but listening to this version is much better.
William Gibson has a great talent for describing the past, present and future (all at the same time) with a great tongue in cheek style.

Interesting to Observe the Present as Imagined in the Past

Gibson became a much better writer in the last ten years. This book is clunky and shows its age at times, but I share Gibsons interested in the interaction between tech and culture in the near future, and while this isn’t the best imagined or crafted cyber-punk story, it has some well done scenes and gets technically, thematically stronger in the final chapters. Recommended for any CP fan, but imperfect and not as good as later Gibson works IMO.

Lucid prescience

Colin Laney working from inside the inside of the inside of a Tokyo subway station finds the red thread that leads to our future. Pulling it ever so gently he contrives to manipulate the manipulator and find a way away from "rich powerful corrupt men" seducing us into a culturally homogonized nightmare.

You Must Love Sci Fi

What would have made All Tomorrow's Parties better?

If you are sci fi fan, then this is for you. I am not a Sci Fi fan, but I was hoping the modern Sci Fi perhaps detective theme would be ok for me. Another reviewer could not get through this book. I am at ch 12 and giving up. J.D. has made the characters wonderful as usual, but I just can't seem to pick up the tread of this story.

What was most disappointing about William Gibson’s story?

This author/genre is not for me, so this is not the fault of the author. The other reviewers love this story, so buy if you are a fan.

Have you listened to any of Jonathan Davis’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I love Jonathan Davis's reading style. See Sandra Brown's Mean Streak. I try to buy as many of this readers' works as I can, but I am just suffering with some of the reads if I am not a fan of the author.
J.D. claim to fame is Sci Fi and anything latin based. He is terrific!

Any additional comments?

note: I use 1.25 x new speed as it helps match an author's intent of the story line.

DIFFICULT NOT TO FINISH ONCE BEGUN, 1ST RATE!

Loved it, not as dazzling as Neuromancer, but much more finely constructed. A tale of a perfectly believable American favela, intricate and independent.

2021 and still relevant.

Gibson created an amazing and fascinating world not to different from ours. this book can be read without reading the others in the series aces would still be great. I have listened to this audio presentation at least three times and could again happily 😊

Awesome series

The Bridge Trilogy is amazingly well written, even if the future events don't actually happen.
It is a shame that the first book isn't available on audio. I had to listen to it on YouTube.
Also, Amazon is evil for canceling Parler like they did.

Out of Date and Slow

I got this book because I remember reading lots of other books by William Gibson as a kid and wanted to relive that thrill. The content and imagined future are a little bit stale in that they describe unrealistic outcomes for technology. there's also several technologies missing that make plot points up it off. I can understand that though, however, the vagueness in which each of the characters and their motivations are described, the apathy and lack of planning where they seem to be content to let life happen to them, everybody is waiting to find out what's about to happen, seem to lead up to one big reveal, which isn't worth listening to the rest of the book to find.

Technology will save us

Good character study, but I don't think the author's vision of hope is viable because the root cause problem (human culture) was not addressed.

Decent Narrator, Confusing Story Line

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Not really worth the time spent. It took me three days to go through a process where individual descriptives or paragraphs turned out to be catchier than what was actually being described. Characters were basically cardboard and amoral. I could not see why it was necessary for the author to invent a new addictive drug, and he never made the case for why it was deadlier than cocaine.

What could William Gibson have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

The cyberspace characters could have been much more convincing. Especially the idoru. It might have made more sense if I had known *why* my sympathies were intended to move with or against any given character. More attention was paid to the scenery than to the characters, and the climax felt weak as a result.

What does Jonathan Davis bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Davis's vocal characterizations were quite strong, I just got the impression that he was working with a weak script.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

No, I would not go see this as a movie. I don't believe in decay for it's own sake, nor do I believe in the glorification of drugs or other vices.

Any additional comments?

Rated R for mature themes and violence.