Rating: 
Summary: A very good read.
Review: The hook of this novel, the ability to transport a neural "stack" that holds your consciousness into a refrigerated human "sleeve", is absolutely brilliant. Takeshi Kovacs, a disgraced special ops warfare officer, is transmitted from his colony world to Earth to solve an apparent murder. In a world where wealthy methusalahs cannot die, what is the point of killing the Bay Area's wealthiest man? From self aware hotels to designer drugs and psionic pop-up ads, the texture of this book kept me engrossed. To discuss more of the plot would ruin it, but this is a great future noir novel, and I do recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Competent Hard-boiled SF, but...
Review: I won't rehash all the reviews here. AC is a competently written piece of film-noir SF exploring a world where life is cheap because consciousness can be recorded and a "person" can be rebooted into a new body. I don't think that all of the ideas are played out consistently (e.g. multiple copies of people seem rare - there doesn't seem to be any kidnapping of downloads). What puzzles me is the persistent Catholic bashing that pervades the book. The Vatican is described as the purveyor of every wrong headed, perverse idea, ever. I could not understand if this was the character (who rebels against authority) or the author's idea. It stands out because no other religion is mentioned, IIRC. Certainly the world of the novel is portrayed as one without transcendence. There's just atoms and your info - no higher authority or justice. And yet the protagonist has visions of a dead comrade, visions that seem to help him. (These could just be hallucinations). I thought the author was going to do something with the religious issue but he never followed up. In the end it just seemed like ranting. Perhaps amazon.com is the wrong place to look for a discussion, but this aspect of the book puzzled me.
Rating:
Summary: Often violent, sometimes raunchy, always gripping
Review: "Altered Carbon" is loaded with spine-ripping, skull-cracking violence, and torrid sex. Thankfully it also packs an amazing amount of fantastic technology, and more importantly, thinks through the implications of its imagined advances. The central conceit is that a few centuries from now, human consciousness can be digitized and stored in battery-sized capsules implanted at the base of the skull. A mind can then be downloaded into a new body, at least for those who can afford it. The main character is a sort of former super special forces soldier who turned to crime after his military service. He is pulled out of an earthly but virtual Purgatory and fitted with a new body, or "sleeve" to investigate a case for a wealthy and ultra-long-lived Earth man. The story gets very complicated from there. The violence is actually rather justified by the world Morgan has created. The ability to switch bodies, live entirely in virtual reality, and buy clones has cut people's bonds to their physical bodies. Physical harm is now classified as "organic damage", more of a property crime akin to smashing a car's windshield. Morgan does a thorough job of portraying the various implications, from describing the feeling of looking at your new body in a mirror to possible social reactions, like religious opposition to the technology. Morgan is also great at seamlessly weaving in the future history (if there is such a thing), terminology and technology. He largely avoids long expository passages to explain things. Instead he sprinkles hints and asides throughout the story, allowing the reader to piece together their own picture. Among the cool things that bring life and sparkle to Morgan's world are subcutaneous meshes that impart speed, strength and heightened perceptions to users; an automated hotel run by an AI with a Jimi Hendrix theme; a backdrop of a human empire or federation spread out over multiple solar systems; a long-gone Martian civilization. You are definitely left wanting to know more about this bizarre and remarkable future. There are shortcomings, but just a few. Some plot points didn't quite feel right to me. For instance, the main character is painted initially as a pretty bad man, but sort of becomes a paragon of selfless virtue by the end. Another, much more minor, point is that going into virtual storage for a century or two is often raised as punishment for serious crimes. Yet we're not quite told what is so bad about it. It seems a convict gets uploaded into storage, falls into a virtual sleep, and then wakes up in a century with a new life in a new world. But given the overall accomplishments of the book, that's a pretty small nit to pick, and I unreservedly recommend the book to those who can stomach intense violence and sex and look forward to the next book from Mr Morgan.
Rating: 
Summary: okay
Review: I think the true sign of the quality of this book is that 2 months after reading it, i couldn't remember the title, much less the plot. That being said, it was an okay book. The setting was interesting but not that much different from a million other cyberpunk worlds. The characterization was okay but none of the characters were truly memorable. The tech had one or two novel ideas but nothing mind-blowing. And the mystery at the center of the plot ultimately turned out to be kind of sordid. Yes, the writing was solid, but ultimately you want more out of good sci-fi, no? I'll keep on searching for the next breakout sci-fi author.
Rating:
Summary: It's Good to Work a Little When You Read
Review: (Really four and a half stars) I read Altered Carbon about a month ago and I keep fondly thinking back to it. For SF not to disappear after initial digestion is a very good sign for me and sadly is increasingly rare. Altered Carbon has the little "throw away" details that I love in my SF, great action sequences and a moral ambivalence that keeps you guessing at what the characters are going to do next. I hate spoilers, so if you want a plot synopsis or a rough idea of Morgan's imaginary future, please supplement your research with other reviews. Suffice to say it is a hard boiled cyberpunkish mystery. The title of this review comes from the lack of "info dumping" in the text. You know - when the ideas and technology of the SF world are just dropped into the text by the author like a lead sinker. Morgan has some great ideas, but he doesn't leave first person, so you have to slowly discover "sleeves" from the protagonist's view. Little details are doled out to the reader and come naturally from the plot. The argot of his world will be second nature by the end and I was sad to put down the book. It has great technological imagination, high action, torture and plenty of sex. The book oozes through some sleezy ranks of humanity, both rich and poor, which no hard boiled mystery can do without. His look at human amorality from top to bottom reminded me of Raymond Chandler at times. Like Philip Marlow, Takeshi Kovacs gets wrapped tighter and tighter by circumstance and has to make some ugly choices to get out. So if it's so great, why not five stars? Well, this is a tremendous book, but I think Morgan will do better. I reserve five stars for something that utterly blows me away, and this one just didn't quite get there. Still a great page turner with equal parts steak and sizzle.
Rating: 
Summary: Best SciFi of 2003
Review: On the advice of my father, who I feel has impeccable taste in SciFi, I picked this book up sometime last year and probably ended up reading it through within a day or two of its receipt. It's an incredibly fun and perilously vivid read. The other reviews do a good job of pecking on the details, but I just wanted to add my two cents. Great time. Can't wait for more Kovacs.
Rating:
Summary: Help, this book won't leave my mind alone!
Review: Not satisfied with dominating my time, conversations, and musings while reading it, it's been 3 months since I finished this book and I'm still thinking about it all the time. WARNING: the hangover from this book is extreme! A murder mystery set in an age when death is largely optional, this book completely reworked my thinking as it relates to murder and mortality. There is enough information out there on the content of this book so I won't delve any deeper into that. I will say however that this book is my favorite piece of Science Fiction since Snow Crash. I look very forward to the sequel! Just my opinion. Hope it helps. Enjoy...
Rating:
Summary: A welcome entry into the field
Review: At the risk of gushing, this was at the top of my list of "Best Recent Reads" for a long time. It's since moved to second, but considering I read it 6 months ago, that's pretty good. Taut action scenes in a nicely fleshed-out future world make for a great read. At the same time, the well considered implications of technology that offer drastic changes to the way we view the mind and the self make for a much more thought-provoking and interesting read than your traditional hard-boiled detective novel. The day I finished the paperback edition of this, I was online searching for the sequel. Too bad the UK gets it first! But a March release in the US promises to make an excellent birthday gift to myself.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a techno-crume cyber-punk novel?
Review: I was excited to read this book for two reasons (1) It looked like an interesting popular techno-crime novel (2) It was my first eBook. Both sort of disappointed me. The story is based on a very abstract science fiction concept. The concept of "sleeving" digital humans was interesting, but since it's a very radical science fiction concept, it shouldn't have been used as the basis of the plot. Since I didn't quite buy into the whole "digital human" thing, it almost killed the whole story for me. The violence wasn't very effectively used in the story and just made it look like the author has been watching way too many gory movies and playing violent video games. From the other reviews, it sounded like the author tried for a "Blade Runner" or "Alien" feel of the future. The story could have been moved along without the use of the gore and violence that really didn't serve that much of a purpose to the story. Only the main character was of much interest. The rest of the characters were not developed well enough and I didn't quite care too much for them. This is probably because of the futuristic world that was interesting but not developed enough. Again, the whole "sleeved digitalized humans" concept wasn't very believable or developed so it impacted the whole futuristic environment, the feel of the story, and the characters. I didn't think that the sex in the book was that gratuitous. It wasn't too outrageous and to an extent served some purpose. However, one sex scene seemed to have been thrown in rather suddenly and I thought could have been developed better. In addition, the climax included one awkwardly placed perverted sex and almost seemed to be placed there to justify a subsequent violent scene. Overall, however, it seemed like the sex and sex-related scenes served to only emphasize the futuristic cyber-punk feel of the book and were placed awkwardly throughout the book. My second overall disappointment came when I bought this book as an eBook form. I thought that I was saving some money on a newer and more convenient book form. Reading the book by scrolling through the pages wasn't bad. However, I soon found that Adobe and Microsoft Reader both were designed to make books as inaccessible as possible to alternate readers. In other words, with a physical book, I could recommend it and lend it to someone else. Ebooks, however, are specifically created to limit the viewing of the book to those who have paid for it. The software does say that the book can be viewed on up to 6 different computers. If I wanted to view my book on another computer, it's incredibly troublesome to open the ebook since the document must look for permissions from an internet server and for the original customer to sign in. This is incredibly restrictive and really serves only to make as many people as possible pay for the book. But what if I loved this book that I wanted as many as people to read it. Not unless I pay a fee for that! This is pretty underhanded and a very unattractive development of electronic media. Overall, the book and the ebook format didn't turn me off to techno-crime or the electronic media format. They were, however, very mediocre introductions to both the genre and a newer 'revolutionary' format.
Rating:
Summary: A bullet for your thougts
Review: Imagine a world, where you won't die. You will just get into another body. And, if you are rich, you can even have your own clones, for each day of the week, for example. In such world, what is the point of murder?
Why was one of the richest man on Earth murdered, just to be reborn in another clone?
This is the question Takeshi Kovach is faced with, when he gets to Earth to investigate the case he doesn't want to. He is also faced with assasins, AIs, which gone a bit crazy, and a whole world for us to see and marvel at.
"Altered Carbon" gives us a solid mystery, rooted in an interesting and well-realised future. And there is a lot of action thrown in, if the mystery is not enough for you.
While some readers critisized the book for being too graphic in depicting sex and violence, I didn't have problems with those issues. Maybe I'm more tolerant, or maybe I thought that for the man like Takeshi this was the right way to narrate his story. He is a mercenary, who has been through several horrible wars - do you expect him to be poetic, while describing sex? Overall, this book is one of the strongest SF thrillers I've read in a long time, may be since "Snowcrash". Buy it!
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