Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

Richard K Morgan’s Altered Carbon, the first Takeshi Kovacs novel, is a roller-coaster ride. Morgan cycles us through traditional science-fiction, some mean-streets detective drama and a fine caper story before the book ends, all told by Kovacs himself, a disillusioned killer, a futuristic Sam Spade only slightly less dirty than the dirty business he’s in, a battered knight in tarnished armor.

In Altered Carbon’s future world, science has given humanity the ability to digitize consciousness and store it in a tiny canister embedded in a vertebra at the base of the skull. What is stored in these “cortical stacks” lasts indefinitely and can be decanted into a virtual reality or “sleeved” into a clone or any vacant human body. This technology was refined for intergalactic space tr... Read More

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

Roughly 500 years in the future, death becomes avoidable. Initially used as a method for deep space travel, a person’s consciousness can be digitally stored for an indefinite amount of time and then downloaded into a “cortical stack” of an unoccupied human body or “sleeve.” However, the procedure does require financial means, and even then only the very rich can get their original body back. This scientific breakthrough, along with space travel, true A.I., virtual reality, biological enhancement, cloning, and other technological advances, haven’t served to better mankind as much as further complicated it. Class separation is even more extreme, now that the prosperous have several lifetimes to increase their power. Religious factions oppose man-made immortality. Meanwhile, generations are born and re-sleeved on distant planets while Earth is slowly becoming a relic.

To help maintain c... Read More

Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan

Three weeks ago I finished Broken Angels, the second book in Richard K. Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs trilogy. I’ve been struggling with this review ever since. Broken Angels is good noir science fiction. It is well-written. I just didn’t like it.

In some places in the book the timbers of the plot show through the flash-and-dazzle, but that is no more than a nuisance. Kovacs is a believable character in a complicated and exciting situation. The world, Sanction IV, is not well drawn at all, and that is deliberate. Sanction IV’s civil war is is just One More War on One More World. The planet’s people, its history, its culture and its future don’t matter to the people Kovacs works for, or to Kovacs himself for that matter.

On medical leave from the government-sponsored military, Kovacs is drawn into a ... Read More

Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan

Thirty years after the events in Altered Carbon, Takeshi Kovacs hires on with Carrera's Wedge, a mercenary outfit contracted by the government-supported corporations to fight against revolutionaries on the distant planet Sanction IV. Kovacs is a former Envoy — one of the elite covert ops commandos feared throughout known space. So, like it or not, all-out military conflict is what Kovacs does best. However, he has become bone-weary of the stalemate that is only serving to greatly increase the body count. So when a pilot approaches Kovacs with tales of a Martian artifact that can instantaneously transport people and things to the edges of the universe, he seizes on a way out with a huge pay-off as an added bonus. Kovacs finagles Matthias Hand, a high executive with the Mandrake Corporation, to get financial backing for a clandestine mission to recover the ancient, alien star-gate. Kov... Read More

Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan

Takeshi Kovacs spends most of Woken Furies, the third book in the Kovacs series, in a bad mood. Kovacs is an ex-Envoy, a carefully selected, highly trained, rigidly conditioned assassin for the powerful and draconian Protectorate, so when he’s in a bad mood, people usually die.

Of course, many of them are not really dead, or rather, Really Dead, because people in Richard K. Morgan’s future universe have cortical stacks, shiny storage devices attached to their cervical vertebrae, holding consciousness. As long as your cortical stack is undamaged, your consciousness can just be downloaded into a new physical body, called a “sleeve.” While you’re waiting for a sleeve your consciousness can be dormant, or it might be active, inserted into a virtual environment. This could be a paradise or a torture chamber, depending upon who got hold of your stack.... Read More

Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan

Back on his home planet of Harlan’s World, Takeshi Kovacs is trying to mind his own business — which happens to be a personal open season on the priests of a fanatical religion. However, he soon becomes a target of the Yakuza, hiring on with some machine-killing mercenaries, on the outs with the ruling family, in bed with a resurrected legendary rebel prophet, and throwing in with surfer revolutionaries, all while being hunted by a younger version of himself. Despite being so darned adorable Kovacs just can’t get an even break, but he does kind of bring it on himself.

Woken Furies is Richard K. Morgan’s third and latest TAKESHI KOVACS novel. Raw-edged violence, graphic sex, and bad attitudes continue to be a mainstay of this series. (Can you say awesome?) Altered Carbon is still my favorite but Read More

The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan

The Steel Remains, by Richard Morgan, is a dark, gritty, and in some places obscene fantasy that will not be to everyone’s liking. So let’s get the surface material out of the way — if you don’t like your books laced with a heaping amount of f-bombs, graphic sex (hetero and homosexual), and graphic violence, The Steel Remains is not for you. In the slightest. Run. Run as far as you can. And if you can live with the swearing, sex, and violence? In that case, The Steel Remains will mostly entertain, though it isn’t a standout fantasy, nor does it, I think, rise to the level of Morgan’s sci-fi stories involving Takeshi Kovac... Read More