Chia McKenzie is a fourteen year old member of the Seattle chapter of the Lo/Rez fan club. She has been selected to track down the rumor of the announced marriage. Traveling to Japan, she is conned into smuggling contraband. She manages to get away and connects up with the Tokyo chapter. Chapter meetings are held in virtual reality, in carefully designed meeting locales.

Both Colin and Chia try to unravel the mystery surrounding Rez, each from their own direction. In both cases, events in their own lives complicate the goal. To go much farther would reveal too much of the plot.

Idoru is typical William Gibson. It takes place in the future -- close enough to be recognizable, yet far enough that today's trends have taken on a life of their own. He takes us on a tour from the very bottom of society, where extortion and maiming are commonplace, to the top, where pop and media stars spend their time. Yet in some ways, this novel is not as richly textured as some of Gibson's past works. His early novels painted a scene unlike those of any other writer at the time. Gibson had to provide not only the plot, characters, and scene, but also the details of the background, to make it understandable and believable. The wonder of his earlier work was to extrapolate from our current fashions and metamorphose them into something new and seemingly unexpected. Now that the place is known (via his other novels), perhaps he has decided to leave some of the imagery to us.

This is not to say that readers will not find wonders. Gibson is still able to take virtual reality, computer networks, nanotechnology, and pop star worship, temper them with human strengths and frailty, to evoke new images and unforeseen conclusions.

One problem with the novel is that the back story of Colin takes a long time to be told, and then it has little bearing on the rest of the plot. As a result, the first half of the book seems to drag, and it's difficult to become interested in the characters. The last half of the book, however, kept my attention.