Rating: 
Summary: Very Very Very Good, But Not Great
Review: The second Takeshi Kovacs book (following the outstanding Altered Carbon), is less of a character-driven crime novel and more of a sci-fi treasure hunt. Set some 30 years after the events of Altered Carbon (about 500 years ahead of our time), the story begins with Kovacs as an officer in Carrera's Wedge, the most feared mercenary company in the stars. The Wedge is currently employed by the Protectorate to suppress a nasty little insurgency on the relatively insignificant planet of Sanction IV. Kovacs is none too thrilled about his role as enforcer of the multi-planetary conglomerates in the suppression of the pseudo-Marxist rebellion, and when fate offers him the chance to cash in big if he deserts, he grabs it.
In the Kovacs series, humans have managed to navigate the stars with the assistance of a rather incomplete understanding of Martian star charts. However, the trick of traveling faster than light hasn't been figured out, so space travel mostly consists of "needlecasting," a process in which one's consciousness is digitized, sent, and then "resleeved" in cortical "stacks" that are implanted new bodies. The reason Kovacs deserts is that there is a rumor that an intact Martian starship buried on Sanction IV, outside a city blanketed in fallout from the ongoing war. Humanity has never seen a Martian starship, and its worth is incalculable. Kovacs and the slippery character that recruits him make their way to a government concentration camp, where they free the archeologist who had been working on the project.
Morgan handles the next part of the story well, as the trio seek out a backer for their scheme. Admirable realism os displayed in walking through how even a band of rogues needs a backer to pay for all the specialized equipment they'll need, even if it means dealing with a corporate executive they can't be sure they can trust. There are various complications in finalizing the plans, including the assembly of a team of specialists. This is one of the most inventive sections of the book, as Kovacs visits a "Soul Market", where a voodoo figure sells the bloody stacks of war dead by the kilogram! Once finally assembled and debriefed, the team arrives at the site, where they attempt to open a "gate" to a distant star system where the Martian starship is sitting. While doing so, they must content with not one ticking clock, but two! There is the heavy fallout, which is rapidly killing them with radiation poisoning, and a frightening defensive nanoweaponry system which evolves in response to their countermeasures. And, as with so many team treasure hunts, there is mysterious sabotage, hinting at a traitor in their midst...
Up to this point, the book is almost every bit the equal of Broken Angels, however the last quarter or so is a bit disappointing. I'm not a big fan of sci-fi or fantasy where the protagonist is at the center of events that have repercussions for all of humanity, and that's certainly where this one ends up. In both books, Kovacs spouts a lot of angst about his training as a killing machine and how empty and cold-blooded he has become. However in Altered Carbon, all the mayhem he unleashes is more or less deserved, and he does end up making sacrifices to save a person he cares for. In this outing, he kills a lot of innocent bystanders, and rather implausibly becomes emotionally entangled following an intense virtual sex encounter. All of which is to say, while Kovacs is the same character, he sure doesn't seem to act the same. The book is also slowed down a bit by a bit of backstory involving the various factions of Martian archeologists. It's still a very, very good book, and well worth reading if you liked Altered Carbon, or are simply a fan of science fiction. It's full of top-notch action, intrigue, and some of the better-written sex scenes I've encountered lately.
Rating: 
Summary: Falls far short of its predecessor
Review: This follow-up to Richard Morgan's debut novel falls far short of that incredible effort. The book suffers from flat characters, a dragging, cliched plot, eye-rolling sex scenes, and twists that aren't so much logical conclusions of earlier developments as mere tools meant to give the story the appearance of cleverness.I really, really wanted to like this sequel after devouring the first one and passing it along to many friends and family. Part of the problem is that the plot of the original stemmed from the techno-weirdness Morgan envisioned. The story revolved around the idea of the "stack" -- a small storage unit for consciousness placed at the based of the skull. No stacks, no story. While "Broken Angels" sees many of Morgan's fascinating technologies (stacks, needlecasts, neurachem, etc), they feel stale and really not essential to the plot. With its plot of a mercenary squad sent to investigate a potentially world-changing Martian artifact, the book could have taken place in any number of generic sci-fi settings. "Altered Carbon" was a gripping mystery thriller, but "Broken Angels" is a cliched action flick. This book also repeats what to mind was the most glaring flaw of "Altered Carbon": the unbelievable emotional state of the main character, Takeshi Kovacs. In "Altered Carbon", Kovacs is introduced as a cold-blooded renegade soldier, who, throughout the course of the novel, kills dozens of people but by the end turns out to be a great guy who makes outgrageously selfless sacrifices. In "Broken Angels" he switches loyalties with ease and inflicts "real death" on scores of people, yet somehow develops a major soft spot for a mentally unbalanced archeologist after one session of virtual sex. It just doesn't ring true. Finally, Morgan has laced this book with strange references to voodoo and extreme politics. It's never clear what purpose the voodoo beliefs of one character serve, and the whole thing is forgotten by the end, anyway. And was anyone else confused with what was going on with the Martians? Politically, Morgan serves up some interesting nuggets, particularly with regards to "Quellism", a philosophic goulash apparently baked from ingredients like pragmatism, communitarianism and anarchism. Cynically, the rest of the major political players are either greedy corporations, insane military types, or bloodthirsty revolutionaries. Morgan does give us a heads-up in an introductory note urging people to read far-left-wing John Pilger -- who never met a dictator he didn't like -- and Robin Morgan (presumably no relation?), a radical feminist whose memorable quotes include "Kill your fathers, not your mothers" and "I feel that 'man-hating' is an honorable and viable political act". Like I said, I really wanted to like this book, but the flaws pretty much eclipsed the few positive aspects. Die-hard "Altered Carbon" fans will probably want to check this one out anyway, but others would be better off re-reading the first one or shopping elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Between two stools.
Review: This sequel to Altered Carbon reads more agreeably, but is still too dependent upon the deployment of action and [love] scenes simply for the sake of it. The tail end of the book could have done with less dialogue and more narrative to balance it up. And there is still a credibility gap with respect to terminology and nomenclature, which seems out of place in a 26th century future context. Some attempt is made to imbue matters with a greater degree of political and motivational development than in Altered Carbon, but not as much as I would have preferred. I am still irked by the fairly obvious influences, in this case: Forbidden Planet, and the shadow creatures from Babylon 5, to name a couple. This is also an issue with other writers, whose apparently novel inclusions can turn out not to be, if one reads widely enough. Richard Morgan is a very good writer, but like other very good writers, he needs something significantly fresher than this to be getting on with.
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!!
Rating:
Summary: The next screen
Review: _Altered Carbon_ wasn't a fluke. Richard K. Morgan is one _helluva_ writer. This book has been available in the UK for the better part of a year, and having been thoroughly impressed with Morgan's first book, I've been eagerly awaiting the US release of his second. I am _so_ not disappointed. You'll recognize the backdrop; it's the same corporate-controlled dystopian future we've seen in pretty much every cyber-nano-crypto-geno-neuro-psycho-techno-noir SF novel since Phil Dick founded cyberpunk and forgot to insist on receiving credit for it. But Morgan isn't just recycling familiar themes here, any more than Beethoven imitated Bach by using some of the same notes. Morgan has his own outlook, his own themes, and his own voice. If you've read the introductory plot summaries elsewhere on this page, you already know everything I could tell you without spoiling things. Suffice it to say that Takeshi Kovacs is back and in excellent form. Here, he's initially serving with Carrera's Wedge, deployed on Sanction IV against an uprising led by one Joshua Kemp, when he's approached with -- and accepts -- a surprising offer. _Broken Angels_ not only has a fine plot of its own but fills in some more of the backstory for _Altered Carbon_. Nor is it a rehash of its hardboiled-PI predecessor; this one's military SF, more along the lines of _The Forever War_, with which it shares some abstract themes and narrative flavor. That narrative flavor alone makes the book worth reading. Morgan is such a powerful writer that even if you get bored with the action (not likely), you can enjoy yourself by just sitting back and watching the prose crackle. (But don't look away for even a single paragraph; you'll miss something.) In short, _Broken Angels_ will appeal to readers who liked _Altered Carbon_ but who don't expect Morgan to keep rewriting the same book over and over. _Very_ well done, and it belongs on the very shortest shortlist of good recent SF.
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