I think they're all deeply flawed, despite being great reading.
Neuromancer benefits from a neat underlying idea (an attempt to free an AI), but reading it today, it suffers from overly linear plotting. The "heist" story is made out of a clunky series of steps so the characters can collect McGuffins, and has the "gang" stay together just so the main character can be a passive spectator to it all. Plot points such as Case's relationship with Molly are not fleshed out enough to make much sense, and Case himself remains something of a cipher at the end; characters like Armitage are much more fleshed-out by comparison.
Count Zero, on the other hand, has more careful characterizations, and shows Gibson mature as a writer, but relies on the old sci-fi trope where multiple intertwined subplots slowly accelerate, then race towards a suspenseful climax in which everyone eventually comes together and realizes they're all part of the same mystery. I liked a lot of the parts, and Turner is certainly a lot more fleshed-out character than anyone in Neuromancer, but I always felt it was a bit scattered, and its conclusion, which should feel neat — AIs inhabiting the net and manipulating events from behind the scenes — feels flat, perhaps because the AIs' manipulation seems overall more mundane and less profound than what Gibson intended.
(I don't remember enough of Mona Lisa Overdrive to comment, which is perhaps telling.)
Gibson is a great prose writer who often conjures up terrific images of futurism, which is what ultimately saves some of his books from being terrible, but he also has a huge problem with plotting. Most of his stories follow a very specific formula, in which a mysterious something (usually an eccentric billionaire who's into art) hires a brilliant, no-nonsense loner to do something that turns out to involve shadowy, revolutionary tech, or some variation on this. As great a writer Gibson is, he is never able to hide the mechanics of his plotting, and as a reader, it's often jarring to see the writer show his cards so much.
I think my favourite work of his is still his early collection of short stories, Burning Chrome. It highlights his scintillating prose and wonderful ideas, but suffers from none of the awfulness of plotting.
* Terry Pratchett had a problem with endings, but his plotting is often fantastic.
* Iain M. Banks. Consider Phlebas is a "heist" novel that resembles Neuromancer in structure, but where the mechanics of the plot never gets in your face. The Algebraist (which is a great read despite being way overlong) and Against a Dark Background resemble Gibson in certain ways. Player of Games, Feersum Enjinn (which often reads like something Terry Pratchett might have come up with) and Use of Weapons are also really well-plotted novels.
* Philip K. Dick rarely sticks his endings, but he has some great plot-based stories, such as Ubik and Three Stigmata.
Neuromancer benefits from a neat underlying idea (an attempt to free an AI), but reading it today, it suffers from overly linear plotting. The "heist" story is made out of a clunky series of steps so the characters can collect McGuffins, and has the "gang" stay together just so the main character can be a passive spectator to it all. Plot points such as Case's relationship with Molly are not fleshed out enough to make much sense, and Case himself remains something of a cipher at the end; characters like Armitage are much more fleshed-out by comparison.
Count Zero, on the other hand, has more careful characterizations, and shows Gibson mature as a writer, but relies on the old sci-fi trope where multiple intertwined subplots slowly accelerate, then race towards a suspenseful climax in which everyone eventually comes together and realizes they're all part of the same mystery. I liked a lot of the parts, and Turner is certainly a lot more fleshed-out character than anyone in Neuromancer, but I always felt it was a bit scattered, and its conclusion, which should feel neat — AIs inhabiting the net and manipulating events from behind the scenes — feels flat, perhaps because the AIs' manipulation seems overall more mundane and less profound than what Gibson intended.
(I don't remember enough of Mona Lisa Overdrive to comment, which is perhaps telling.)
Gibson is a great prose writer who often conjures up terrific images of futurism, which is what ultimately saves some of his books from being terrible, but he also has a huge problem with plotting. Most of his stories follow a very specific formula, in which a mysterious something (usually an eccentric billionaire who's into art) hires a brilliant, no-nonsense loner to do something that turns out to involve shadowy, revolutionary tech, or some variation on this. As great a writer Gibson is, he is never able to hide the mechanics of his plotting, and as a reader, it's often jarring to see the writer show his cards so much.
I think my favourite work of his is still his early collection of short stories, Burning Chrome. It highlights his scintillating prose and wonderful ideas, but suffers from none of the awfulness of plotting.