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Pattern Recognition

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Pattern Recognition

By: William Gibson
Narrated by: Bronwen Price
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About this listen

Cayce Pollard owes her living to her pathological sensitivity to logos. In London to consult for the world's coolest ad agency, she finds herself catapulted, via her addiction to a mysterious body of fragmentary film footage, uploaded to the web by a shadowy auteur, into a global quest for this unknown 'garage Kubrick'.

Cayce becomes involved with an eccentric hacker, a vengeful ad executive, a defrocked mathematician, a Tokyo Otaku-coven known as Eye of the Dragon and, eventually, the elusive 'Kubrick' himself.

William Gibson's audiobook is about the eternal mystery of London, the coolest sneakers in the world and life in (the former) USSR.

©2004 William Gibson (P)2021 W F Howes Science Fiction Technothrillers Thriller & Suspense Thriller Fiction England Suspense

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A very immersive rip roar of a journey with just a whiff of cyberpunk undertones

Immersive

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OK, you don't need a book review. You want to know about the performance. It's... mixed news. The pacing is good: the weird sense of displacement comes through strongly, the narrative voice is good and in some ways I'm enjoying this reading better than when I read the novel myself. On the other hand, Price really struggles to convince with her male voices, and even more frustratingly her accents are *very* hit-and-miss. If you choose audiobooks for accessibility reasons and so don't have an alternative, I'd say, go for it - the reading is good enough to enjoy the book (which is excellent). If you're a text reader looking for great audio performances as a bonus, maybe this isn't for you. YMMV.

Compelling story, mixed performance

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im 47 at time of writing this and the combination of beautiful storytelling and exacting references from the time had me loving this book,

y2k dreams

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Reckon I would’ve enjoyed it more if I’d read rather than listened to it.

Story didn’t seem to be about pattern recognition as billed. Improbable plot, flimsy characters, irritating linguistic quirks, too much product placement.

Performance poor, especially the accents and the ‘rendering’ of the main protagonist.

Underwhelming

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Unless you need audiobooks because of a disability, don't waste your money on this one. I love William Gibson and have many of his stories on audio version, but I regret buying this one.
The narration is so disruptive, that it affects the story. the first book is finished and I only have a vague idea of the storyline. the rhythm of reading is awful with interruptions to the sentences in the oddest parts, sometimes even breaking rhythm at every 3 words.
I wasn't too keen on the accents either, but that wasn't so bad.
Spare yourself the irritation.

worst audio

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This is the most meandering of Gibson's storylines I've experienced. The setting feels very dated, the protagonist has the personality of a wet paper bag at best, and at worst she is frustratingly gullible and incompetent. She doesn't even have much of an impact on the plot or the events, and ultimately her motivation is paper thin.
The macguffin (because the central focus of the story feels like just that) is so inconsequential and doesn't really have any meaningful payoff.
It doesn't help that the reading is downright abysmal. The actor's faked American accent (when they even bother or remember to do it) is so atrocious that I honestly would have much preferred if they had just read it in their natural voice. All the male characters also sound bafflingly garbage.

If you come into this expecting something like the Sprawl books, I'd recommend the Jackpot-trilogy rather than this one. Gibson's razor sharp writing style is completely lost in this foggy, directionless lack of inspiration. Hard pass.

Possibly Gibson's worst work

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