Now it's probably fair to say I had some misgivings about Pattern Recognition, the first book in what is referred to as the Blue Ant trilogy. Indeed upon finishing this follow up I pondered if I could get away with just copying and pasting the same thoughts into this review as much of it still applied. One bout of careful consideration later I was just about to CTRL+V that content over when I paused for thought and realised that it wouldn't be entirely fair or accurate.
Sure there's still the same awe of the cutting edge and all those who dwell upon it's shifting boundaries. Again the trendy and the technological intermingle against a backdrop of the unreal and the virtual. The form and the language are unmistakably consistent with the earlier work. Everytime the author attempts description, he still veers between clinically itemised lists and the odd attack of baffling verbiage. Sometimes his characters sound like human beings, sometimes they sound like on-brand androids in well-written TV commercials. So on and so forth.
Suffice to say there's a lot of familiar territory here as we move on from 'cool hunters' to hip ex-musicians turned journalists. Adding to the mix this time however we get locative art, the Volapük dialect, secret operatives, drug addicts and the logistics of international freight. Sounds promising to be sure and at least on the surface of it there seems ample opportunity to build something atop this busy bedrock. A chance to improve upon or otherwise distinguish itself from what came before if nothing else. Alas, despite the change in subject matter, it all starts feeling very familiar very quickly, like an old record player at a new speed.
Not a faster speed though. If anything the pacing is more an issue here than it was in the first book with whole pages slowing the momentum right down to a halt on a too-frequent basis. Early sections anticipating the growth of virtual and augmented reality all seem very prescient to be sure but are conveyed in a tone barely more involved than technical documentation at its most functional.
The minutiae of things obviously occupy a lot of the authors headspace, he's highly invested in the subject matter but it rarely translates into a truly interesting treatment of character or plot. There is that persistent nagging feeling that I'm skimming through more interesting material in favour of this vague quest vaguely pursued. A tale often broken up by restrospective material on niche subjects, tangents that feel like they are written with real enthusiasm but are too sporadic to course correct the pacing.
This time around we follow multiple characters and intrigues which all start promisingly enough. The focus on the sole 'cool seeker' of Pattern Recognition and the exclusive nature of their particular sphere did that book no favours as a compelling piece of work for me. Here however you have rock star journalist, sinister spy, possibly another sinister spy, an accessory to the fact, a drug addled assistant/kidnap victim and many more characters who all in turn start to sound very similar as the plot gently rolls onward. The particulars vary but the broad wavelengths remain the same.
Invariably they all become subject to the same lack of forward momentum. An attack multiplied on many fronts and where I began to wonder if I might be better served by just Googling the material and picking a link at random for a better reading experience. It's as if it becomes an exercise in making otherwise interesting material as dry as possible. To what end I cannot say but it felt like a test of my patience to get to the end of some of these chapters. Not something I say with joy given the amount of work that must go into any book but true all the same.
By the end it feels like a perfunctory exercise in joining the dots. Threads reach their conclusion, everyone comes into the orbit of a mystery box and I end up wondering about all the time it takes to get there. There are some interesting glimpses into the mind of someone who clearly spends a lot of his time thinking about emergent trends and the shape of the near future but also there is a lot of lacklustre material to wade through to get to it. The fixation on the trends and the cutting edge don't enhance the nuts and bolts of the storytelling and on that front it feels more a backward step than a forward one from what came before.
As I say it would be unfair to judge this book by another. In some ways it's better, in others it's certainly worse. Less an upward curve of improvement, more an uneven horizontal line that often threatens to get interesting but never quite arrives there. The fascination with emergent trends loses its novelty when read long after the fact and what's left struggled to sustain my interest on its own terms. I'll proceed onwards with the third part of this trilogy but I daresay it's more out of a hope for a better read than the expectation of it.
Ultimately, it's neither a recommendation to read or a warning to avoid. It's very much just there and maybe that just about says it all.
(Disclaimer: this is an expanded and revised edition of some initial and more immediate thoughts posted on Goodreads and Amazon a short time ago. A deliberate counterpoint, a benefit of hindsight edition that tests the method in the madness of immediate impressions. In short, the longer version.)
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