I actually liked this book better than The Peripheral, though it has some of the same weaknesses. We have kind of moved past how the stubs (alternate futures not connected to the "main" line) get generated, and that's a good thing because there's nothing in either book that pretends to explain them beyond the fact that they are Chinese. Several logical things are happening--Ainsley Lowbeer, whose title is Metropolitan Police but that's about a toenail worth of what she does, is getting ever more powerful. It's more clear how the stubs connect to the main, since by using peripherals they can exchange information. And the AI feels like it could have happened already. If it has, would we know? Only if it decided to announce itself...
That said, it doesn't live up to the visionary fire of The Sprawl trilogy, though that's setting the bar awfully high. The extrapolations feel less like a whole new world, and more like a good anticipation of the very sad current one we're dealing with. The characters in Agency have grown, relative to Peripheral--Netherington has stopped drinking, though he is now very boring (perhaps deliberately so, he's a very familiar family man now), and protagonist Verity Jane is a more worldly wise ingenue than the one in The Peripheral.
Throughout the book it becomes clear that Lowbeer has gone beyond the point where anyone can control her, and the end of the book makes that perfectly clear. That sets up a turn in Book three--absolute power corrupts absolutely. We shall see.
My Goodreads Review
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