Idoru follows the stories of 14 year old Chia, who has been sent to Japan by her chapter of the Lo Rez fan club to investigate a marriage rumor, and of Laney, whose ADD allows him to focus focus and spot patterns that show more probable outcomes and who has been hired to focus focus on the marriage rumor. Their stories converge around the rumor that rock star Rez plans to marry Rei Toei, an idoru or machine generated character.
Chia quickly becomes mixed up in some type of smuggling operation when she carries a bag through customs for someone. She tries hard to find out as little as possible what is being smuggled. As she tries to find out whatever she can about Rez's intention to marry, she realizes that someone is looking for her and is soon much more interested in safely evading the smugglers.
Laney's story contains many flashbacks that show his motivations. Because he can spot patterns in reams of data about a person, he once realized that someone he was analyzing as part of his job was going to commit suicide. His attempts to get into a cleaner type of analysis motivate most of his actions.
A big positive was the way the stories came together. Although Rei Toei is only background most of the time, she appears and when she does she seems to have been doing more along the way. Little details fall into place, maybe something like details falling together for one of Laney's "nodal points." It is also nice that most of the characters are fleshed out. A negative was that this book dragged and only got going for me near the end.
