Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon

[Jaqhama]

I finished Altered Carbon after two days.


I liked it a lot, had some real Bladerunner ideas in it.
It's a mixture of action/adventure/detective/cyberpunk/sci-fi.

Lots of sex and violence. And I don't mean romance and excitment.
Although there is some of that also.

I will admit that I was struggling a bit by the final chapters, mainly because the plot had got so convulted; but it was aiming towards a very predictable ending.

I think the author tried a little too hard to prove he could write a plot filled story myself.
There's quite a few characters one has to keep track of.
The futuristic ability to have one's consciousness downloaded into a 'stack' and then uploaded into a 'sleeve'...a new body...made for some interesting scenarios.

I'm now reading book two: Broken Angels.
This one steers away from a detective story and takes the reader more into a military style adventure.
Lots of new terms and expressions being made up along the way...and some political/corporate power plays coming up thick and fast.
I have to admit I don't like overly complicated stories, be they fiction or sci-fi.
I much prefer well designed alien worlds and enviroments rather than twisting plot lines.

The vehicles in the Altered Carbon worlds can be driven along a road or fly thru the air and sometimes even be used underwater.
I'm still waiting for the author to explain what powers them and how they actully work. Being a motorcycle maniac it's not enough for me to just accept a car or bike in the future hovers or flies...I want to know what they use for propulsion.
The jet-bikes in my futuristic biker stories use anti-matter engines controlled by tri-magnets and are held aloft (a meter or so above the ground) by repulsor beams. The jet blast from the exhaust at the rear of the bikes propels them forwards.
It's a lot better than simply saying a jet-bike can fly!

But I haven't read a lot of the newer sci-fi authors in recent years so I thought give Richard Morgan a go because he's had some very good reviews at Amazon and other sites.
I'll let you all know how I go with Broken Angels and the next novel in the series...Woken Furies.

Cheers: Jaq.

----------------------------------------------------------------
You can read some of my stories here:

Skulkers. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. RAT's. La Carcajou. Jet Bike Boogie...at pulpanddagger.
Swamp Story. Down South. Florida Haze.Wild Justice...
at bikernet. (Plus many of my motorcycle related articles.)
The Covert OP. Chick Prick...at milstory.

[Jaqhama]

Ok..Book Two Broken Angels...

I liked this more than the first book (Altered Carbon).
It's a small unit military/exploration adventure with new alien technology as the prize that everyone else want's to discover first.
Not as convulted as the first book, but still enough plot twists to keep the reader interested.
Still lots of action and adventure and still lots of gore and violence. But hey, that's my kinda reading.
Anyone who liked the movie Aliens Two with the Colonial Space Marines is sure to enjoy Broken Angels.
I won't give the story/plot line away any more than I already have done, save to say that I read Broken Angels a lot quicker than Altered Carbon because one wants to know what happens next.
Recommended for lovers of fast paced of Sc-fi action, with more elegant writing, thought provoking suggestions, ideas and statements than one might normally find in a military sci-fi novel.

Looking forward to reading book three shortly: Woken Furies.

Cheers: Jaq.

----------------------------------------------------------------
You can read some of my stories here:

Skulkers. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. RAT's. La Carcajou. Jet Bike Boogie...at pulpanddagger.
Swamp Story. Down South. Florida Haze.Wild Justice...
at bikernet. (Plus many of my motorcycle related articles.)
The Covert OP. Chick Prick...at milstory.

[Jaqhama]

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.

[Coolhand]

Interesting reviews, Jaqhama.

Richard Morgan is one of my favourate writers at the mo, and for me, Altered Carbon was the best of the three books, with Broken Angels coming in a close second.

I actually agree with you about Woken Furies dragging on for too long. Whilst the previous two books held me rapt through the whole journey, Woken Furies felt a little too much like it had been padded out to hit a pagecount, with a couple of lengthly build-ups that never really did pay off. I still enjoyed it but not the same extent as the previous two novels.

Morgan's taken a break from the Kovachs universe, and I do wonder if he made that choice before or after writing Furies.