This is a novel with ambition, but underneath the gloss, I'm doubt there's anything there. Babylon Babies riffs on the usual cyberpunk tropes, mercenaries, mobsters, New Age cults, hackers and shamans, and it tries to transcend the genre by bringing in a bunch of abstruse theory, Deleuze and Guttari, Donna Harraway, Sun Tzu and Liddell Hart.

Instead of deepening the story, the philosophy about schizophrenia and the next evolutionary stage of mankind just overwhelms what could have been a tight, noirish cyberpunk thriller. In the incredibly fractured setting and plot, the inevitable betrayals and triple-crosses happen because they we all agree they're supposed to. Psyches break and go mad because the plot demands it, not because the characters have been pushed beyond their limits.

This novel consciously follows in the footsteps of Neuromancer. But while the novelty of its ideas at the time and the stark evocative force of Gibson's langauge made Neuromancer an instant classic, Babylon Babies just feels trite and forced.