PositiveThe Times (UK)Being in a more philosophical frame of mind and with Google at hand, I managed to cut a path through the dense verbiage. Agency gets a lot more reader-friendly as it goes on, with canny exposition on some of the odder terms thankfully arriving sooner or later ... Gibson takes no prisoners. It’s his gaff, his rules; he plunges the reader deep into a technospeak world full of strange inventions and oddly named characters. He also likes to link his books, as with his Sprawl and Blue Ant trilogies, which makes picking them up in the wrong order a bit like dipping into a later season of a box set ... Gibson’s future universe is a crazy one, but also a lot of fun ... You have to give Gibson credit for a Lewis Carroll-type imagination, even though his characters are less engaging ... Once you have got your head round the cyberjargon and the twin timelines, Agency is an enjoyable read. The way that people talk in ultrahip staccato may not appeal to many, and Eunice is such a fun character it’s a shame she disappears from the narrative fairly early on, but Gibson fans will find he has lost none of his challenging edge. The uninitiated may find it tough going at first, but it’s worth staying with. As for Bertrand Russell, I’m not so sure.
