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Jaqhama · 29th March 2008, 03:46 PM

Right-ho...

Woken Furies. Book three in the Tak Kovacs series.
Again it's a 500 page plus novel and again I was starting to struggle with it holding my interest by the three quarters mark.
Maybe my attention span is getting shorter as I get older? Or maybe authors just don't need to be stringing a story out for 500 pages when they could have completed it in 300?
Anyway...despite the fact that I was bored by the 3/4 mark I continued to read and much to my surprise the ending was something completly unexpected.
In fact the last 40 pages were quite possibly one of the best endings I've read in a book for some time.
Again Kovacs is running amok, killing people right and left. He's got a particular dislike for a certain religious group. He's not adverse to having sex at the drop of a hat with women he's just met either. The F word is used...a lot...more in fact than I think is needed. The C word is thrown about with abandon every now and again as well. You can tell that the F word isn't really Richard Morgan's normal way of talking/writing, because he doesn't manage to make it sound quite right when he uses it.
I really think the F words are there just to make Kovacs sound tougher when he talks...but it gets a bit repetitive in this third book. He also has a habit of mixing UK/Oz speech with American speech. I'm not sure if that's good or not?.
Like the first two novels there's plenty of sex and violence mixed in with (again) a very twisty plot line. In fact the plot had changed so much by the 3/4 mark I had almost forgotten just what the hell it was that Kovacs was trying to achieve.
The last 40 or so pages do make up for the story bogging down at the 3/4 mark though. I'm not going to spoil for anyone by even mentioning what might happen.
To sum the series up so far...Book one was too long. Book two held my interest all the way through. Book three was too long.
Kovacs does a lot of soul searching and has many philosophical moments, often recalling events from the past 300 years when he was 'Sleeved' in different bodies, mainly as an Envoy...a Government special forces super soldier. Some of those moments have little if anything to do with the current storyline and it just makes for wasted pages and wasted thinking on the readers part.
Morgan has mixed action/adventure/violence/sex/cyberpunk/sci-fi and philosophy all in the one series...which lets face it, is not a bad effort. He's taken the sci-fi action/adventure story to a new level in terms of new ideas and original direction. His explanation of how mankind has spread out across the stars is a bit lame...think alien technology discovered on Mars. (I used that idea in a story myself a couple of years ago. It's very Total Recall/Doom/Stargate-ish and un-original). His ideas on the human consciousness being downloaded into a data chip and then uploaded into a new body (when the old body is killed/dies) is great.
If you like fast paced sci-fi action you'll probably enjoy the whole series.
For me book two was the best read...and I will say it's unusual that an author can move from a detective thriller (BK1) to a military adventure (Bk2) to something else again in Bk3.
I'm still waiting to find out how the anti-gravity devices work and what powers the vehicles...

Cheers: Jaq.

29th March 2008, 03:46 PM	#3 (permalink)
Jaqhama Science fiction fantasy Join Date: Nov 2007 Posts: 37	Re: Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon Right-ho... Woken Furies. Book three in the Tak Kovacs series. Again it's a 500 page plus novel and again I was starting to struggle with it holding my interest by the three quarters mark. Maybe my attention span is getting shorter as I get older? Or maybe authors just don't need to be stringing a story out for 500 pages when they could have completed it in 300? Anyway...despite the fact that I was bored by the 3/4 mark I continued to read and much to my surprise the ending was something completly unexpected. In fact the last 40 pages were quite possibly one of the best endings I've read in a book for some time. Again Kovacs is running amok, killing people right and left. He's got a particular dislike for a certain religious group. He's not adverse to having sex at the drop of a hat with women he's just met either. The F word is used...a lot...more in fact than I think is needed. The C word is thrown about with abandon every now and again as well. You can tell that the F word isn't really Richard Morgan's normal way of talking/writing, because he doesn't manage to make it sound quite right when he uses it. I really think the F words are there just to make Kovacs sound tougher when he talks...but it gets a bit repetitive in this third book. He also has a habit of mixing UK/Oz speech with American speech. I'm not sure if that's good or not?. Like the first two novels there's plenty of sex and violence mixed in with (again) a very twisty plot line. In fact the plot had changed so much by the 3/4 mark I had almost forgotten just what the hell it was that Kovacs was trying to achieve. The last 40 or so pages do make up for the story bogging down at the 3/4 mark though. I'm not going to spoil for anyone by even mentioning what might happen. To sum the series up so far...Book one was too long. Book two held my interest all the way through. Book three was too long. Kovacs does a lot of soul searching and has many philosophical moments, often recalling events from the past 300 years when he was 'Sleeved' in different bodies, mainly as an Envoy...a Government special forces super soldier. Some of those moments have little if anything to do with the current storyline and it just makes for wasted pages and wasted thinking on the readers part. Morgan has mixed action/adventure/violence/sex/cyberpunk/sci-fi and philosophy all in the one series...which lets face it, is not a bad effort. He's taken the sci-fi action/adventure story to a new level in terms of new ideas and original direction. His explanation of how mankind has spread out across the stars is a bit lame...think alien technology discovered on Mars. (I used that idea in a story myself a couple of years ago. It's very Total Recall/Doom/Stargate-ish and un-original). His ideas on the human consciousness being downloaded into a data chip and then uploaded into a new body (when the old body is killed/dies) is great. If you like fast paced sci-fi action you'll probably enjoy the whole series. For me book two was the best read...and I will say it's unusual that an author can move from a detective thriller (BK1) to a military adventure (Bk2) to something else again in Bk3. I'm still waiting to find out how the anti-gravity devices work and what powers the vehicles... Cheers: Jaq.