Broken Angels (Kovacs)

Rating:
Summary: This will make it easy for some of us.
Review: Very simply: if you enjoyed William Gibson's early novels
and short stories - then read these books by Richard K.
Morgan. I cannot decide which author writes better prose.
Enough said. :)

Rating:
Summary: Again, not bad but WAY overhyped.
Review: We are more convinced than ever that Morgan's place as a writer will be determined far more by the success of the movies made from his books than the books themselves. Morgan really doesn't have a lot further to go before becoming just as formulaic as James Bond or Conan the Barbarian novels. For the character he has created in the universe he has formatted, that's about all the success he can hope for. While that success is commercially significant (in the extreme!) it hardly literarily significant in the same way that Tolkien or Wolfe or Bradbury are significant. We don't believe that Morgan has broken any new ground nor is there any on the horizon with expected future volumes. His books--absent a cinematic revival--will be the equivalent of pop music's one-hit wonders.

WHO SHOULD READ:

There is a considerable audience that will enjoy Broken Angels--mostly all the people who really enjoyed Altered Carbon. Idolaters of the Byronic Hero (that is, the mysterious and dangerous man with a dark past; silent, brooding and introverted to the point of pathology; and battling somewhat hopelessly against dark forces that will some way assuage his implied guilt) will embrace Takeshi Kovacs with all the fervor that they embrace Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, and Vin Diesel in Pitch Black. We use these movie references rather than literary ones on purpose--you have to like a good movie more than a good book to thoroughly enjoy this novel and there are plenty of "readers" out there fitting this description. As before, you also have to really love buckets-of-blood violence and kinky, explicit sex as well. All in all, not a bad weekend read but not something you put on the same bookshelf as your tattered and beloved edition of The Lord of the Rings.

WHO SHOULD PASS:

There's a disturbing but pervasive penchant to classify readers who enjoyed Snow Crash, Light, and other decent cyberpunk or New Wave novels in to groups of readers who would enjoy Broken Angels. This is not the case. These other, superior novels have a depth, richness, and literariness that is completely lacking in Broken Angels. Better comparisons are made with Neuromancer, King Rat, and Michael Crichton novels; perhaps as well to the host of Terry Goodkind novels if you can stand the comparison to works of fantasy.

READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW AT INCHOATUS.COM

Rating:
Summary: Great mix of politics, violence and archaeology
Review: When I read Altered Carbon, I remember thinking hmm ... I'd really like to read about Takeshi Kovacs (the "hero") and his war buddies ... lo and behold, that's pretty much what you get in Broken Angels, along with alien tech, future politics, and plenty o' action, both real world and virtual. More of a "straight" SF novel than the first Kovacs, which I prefer. Plus, I love the quirky quasi-Marxist political slant native to British writers like Morgan, Ken MacLeod and Iain M. Banks (OK, so the last two are Scots), and I never fail to be amused at the ire it provokes in American readers steeped in Heinleinisms. So yeah, bring on Takeshi Kovacs #3!!