"Count Zero" by William Gibson

The second book of 'The Sprawl' Trilogy.  The first one, "Neuromancer" set the standards for creative Science Fiction and the beginning of a whole new genre 'Cyberpunk', dystopic, corporations-dominated future with ubiquitous and invasive technology coupled with development of new kinds of artificial consciousnesses which has somewhat ambivalent predisposition towards humanity.  Although the previous book was quite convoluted, using way too much "in-world" jargon and with way too many things to track - this one is even worse.  Unfortunately we don't find compelling characters like Case and Molly here, which were well developed if not completely likable. In Count Zero we have the title character Bobby Newmark, the hired gun Turner and the very flat Marly Krushkova, all of which are not at the level of the previous work.

The book builds on the creation of 'free' AI from the previous tome, which then mysteriously breaks into many pieces.  Here we see that each of those pieces is a sentient being which decide that the most appropriate representation for them in order to communicate with humanity is to become Voodoo gods with the appropriate symbolism and ritualistic 'possession.'  Newmark is setup to try a new ICE breaker which almost kills him but he's saved by a sentient entity in cyberspace which turns out to be the daughter of a scientist trying to escape the corporate giant Maas which Turner is hired to help, before being betrayed by his connection Mitchell.  Krushkova is hired by the super-rich and aging Joseph Virek which is trying to upload his consciousnesses into the cyberspace and become one of the AIs there, thus achieving immortality, which the other, real, AIs, do not look kindly upon.  The largest chunk of Wintermute and Neuromancer's unification and subsequent fragmentation from the previous volume is making Joseph Cornell-style boxes with hidden meanings describing very advanced technology.

Everything winds down to the orbital dwelling where the box-maker intelligence lives where the final showdown occurs and the good guys win, in a way.  The post-modernistic style of writing  does away with much descriptions and explanations, but drops you right in the middle of the actions and makes you figure things out for yourself.  It is a hard book to read, but rewarding if you are a Gibson or Cyberpunk fan, as this is the second part of the cult Trilogy that solidified the genre.