Altered Carbon

Rating:
Summary: Two competing stories
Review: There are two competing stories in this book, so you've got to pay attention, or read it a second time.

First, and most obvious, is all the cosmic technology. I won't go into it, because I don't want to spoil the surprises, but let's just say that the song fragments "Oh death where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling?/Oh grave thy victory?" rings really true to these people.

Then there's the detective story, which demands - and repays - a lot of concentration all on its own.

Taken together, they're well done. I really enjoyed this.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: While it's certainly a bit violent, I never felt that the violence was gratuitous. This is a book I can honestly feel good recommending, even though it's edgy and perhaps a little bit more than risque.

Rating:
Summary: It's good but it is also a bit over-hyped
Review: It could be we just don't like mystery novels. At Inchoatus we have a very definite focus and agenda: we think that speculative fiction--when it's at its very best--is mythic, important, and touches on age-old archetypes. Mystery novels just aren't built to do that. They're insular, self-contained, self-centered affairs that live and breathe on what happened to a very, very small group of people. For example, it's very difficult to compare Altered Carbon to something like Red Mars. In Red Mars, the incidental death of some rich corporate guy wouldn't even register as a blip on something as dramatic and all-consuming as planet terraforming and revolution. But Morgan asks us to read an entire novel about it.

But it's not just that: even mystery novels can have something more to say for themselves. The movie Blade Runner was built as a mystery thriller but had very important things to say about awakening intelligence in androids and the meaning of the word "soul." Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is also somewhat of a mystery novel but also touches on very important themes of how people live and breathe in virtual environments and what information and language actually mean to those societies. Our take is that Altered Carbon is missing these things that flesh out the better works of Blade Runner and Snow Crash. Morgan--in this book, at least--just doesn't run that deep.

WHO SHOULD READ THIS

If you love detective novels in any sense--be it set in the past, present, or far-flung future--then you'll really like this book. If you enjoy your mystery novels with heavy doses of violence and sex, then you will love this novel. Fans of Philip K. Dick will especially find resonance in this book as will, to a lesser degree, fans of Neal Stephenson's earlier cyberpunk work and William Gibon's Neuromancer. Altered Carbon is darn near the twin sibling of Reynold's Chasm City so if that book did it for you so will this one. Not particularly striking since you can glean all of this from the snippets quoted on the book jacket but in this (rare) case the book jacket gets it right. While we submit that there is a lack of depth in a literary sense in this book it is the case that the concept of "sleeving" is interesting and people deeply invested in concepts of soul versus body will find quite a lot of satisfaction in the subtext. Beyond all of this, it is also very brisk completely self-contained, and reads quickly, which is a welcome respite from a great lot of tomes and chronicles we've had to deal with lately from the publication houses.

WHO SHOULD AVOID

If you hate mystery novels, most definitely pass. You absolutely must have an emotional stake in "whodunit" in order to enjoy this novel. That is an absolute requirement. If "whodunit" is a niggling detail to you and you'd rather explore some of the more philosophical concepts of living in the 25th century, you'd better check out a different author. Also, in a sense, this novel reads very much like it was intended from day one to be seen on the screen. We feel that it may be a far superior movie than a book. Yet reading things that seem more visual than imaginative can be irritating to a class of reader more in tune with, say, Ray Bradbury. If you're in that camp, this is another novel for you to avoid.

[...]

Rating:
Summary: Extreme graphic violence with a splash graphic sex
Review: I haven't read all of the 105 reviews that precede this one, but none of the ones I did read clearly point out the great waves of stomach-churning violence that fill this book---I'm talking things like eyes being pulled out with pliers and blowtorches applied to feet. There are a couple of equally graphic sex scenes. I won't be reading the sequels.

This is a shame, because the evocation of 25th century San Francisco is excellent, complete with new technologies surrounded by a (mostly) believable culture and argot. There is one giant logical flaw, though: no one backs up their key data. Even those who are smart enough to make one copy never make two, to their ultimate sorrow. Maybe this is inteded as wry commentary on people like me who often fail to make back-ups of own our key data. Or maybe not.

Rating:
Summary: Count Your Stacks, Kovacs Is Coming
Review: Part hard science fiction, part pulp action flick, a little noir mystery, laced generously with outrageous violence and sexual imagery, Altered Carbon reads like a rocket ride in a whirlpool of electrons and blood. Unlike Neuromancer and others of the line, Altered Carbon is scribbled to the margins with fast-paced action drama (and is indeed, for better or for worse, being written as a screenplay by the same person whose prior credits include Rollerball) as Takeshi Kovacs, the reluctant protagonist pries the stacked (pardon the pun) clues to an unlikely homicide from those that bar his way with detached ultraviolence.

Morgan writes with a visceral and calculated style that is partly reflected in the almost gleeful descriptions of violence, gore, sex, not to mention the imaginative implements of war. It keeps the pages turning and helps the plot and characters to "get to the next screen", to quote a euphemism from the book. Hidden among the pages, Kovacs and Morgan also draw interspersed indictments against elements in contemporary human society (especially those that denouce resleeving and thus progress, and the Sharya software, a reference to a very real practice that bears an almost identical name).

As deliciously bruising gunslinger saga and as telescopic snapshots of the human condition in a deathless and soulless age, Altered Carbon doesn't fail to please.

Rating:
Summary: The Human Body as Metaphor
Review: In this inventive fantasy the human body is used as a metaphor, used to hold and play the human personality like a DVD player holds a disc. Life becomes no more than the passing shape of an ocean wave. Human mortality is turned upside down for those who have the big bucks to afford it. ALTERED CARBON must be complimented for attempting a new portrayal of reincarnation. One can be reborn into another body (sleeve) or, if one is rich enough, into one's updated clone. There is no hard science here. There is no discussion of the carbon "stack" technology, no hint of how the data storage was accomplished. Why not design the stack from more sturdy diamond crystals?

To suspend your disbelief of this tale the reader must discard a whole library of thought on the human consciousness and soul. One must discard any notion of God. God is dissolved in this carbon stack. Several writers, for example, Shaw and Silverberg, have dealt with the consequences of a prolonged human life. In ALTERED CARBON the downside of living to be Methuselah's 969 years is barely touched on. Why? Because his characters do not share the essence of being human - mortality.

The shortcomings of this novel is that the paper cut out characters could not be identified with. In such a story it doesn't matter who wins or loses. Who cares? Here the end of one's life meant only getting on to the next screen. No reader is apt to return from the dead with a new body to inhabit. If you enjoy reading of characters used as snuff fodder to satiate bizarre sexual appetites, characters who consider humans as worth no more than cancerous cells, then this may be your best read. For this writer the tale was prolonged unnecessarily for at least 100 pages.


Rating:
Summary: Disturbing and Inviting Look into the Future.
Review: Set on 25th century earth, in a future were humans have the technology to stored all their mind data in cortical stacks implanted in their bodies, and come back after death in other bodies or sleeves as they are called, this book is not your typical detective novel. It's more of a journey trough a fascinating and violent landscape filled with lots of technological surprises, that clearly shows just how disturbing and at the same time attracting and strangely inviting scientific achievements can be. This future is so cool you can't help it but want to be there. Kovacs is a great main character. He's short tempered, he's violent and he goes for what he truly wants. There's lots of action in the story, A SEX SCENE THAT IS TRULLY AMAZING, and enough turns and twists to keep you well interested till the end. Richard K Morgan is definitely a writer to look into. Great Book!

Rating:
Summary: Stacks-up against the best out there.
Review: Snow Crash (another more famous "cyberpunk" novel) is like a kids cartoon compared to this gritty, sexual and violent novel. R. M. sets the world, the year 25K, alive. Don't look for pandering descriptions of the world of tomorrow though. The future unravels slowly with only the bits necessary for the story shown. The plot on the other hand doesn't unravel as much as bowl you over. This is one of the only books I've read, other than ghost stories, which have the main character die within the first three pages. The gunfight on the first pages sets the pace for the rest of the book and Morgan's descriptions are amazing.

This is not for anyone who is easily offended by violence or sexual situations. But don't let that hinder your enjoyment of the novel, the V and S fit perfectly into the world Morgan has crafted. Look at our tendencies as a society now and you may see our future printed in this book.

If you do decide to read Altered Carbon it would be my advice to remember all of the names referenced early on. My memory is bad to say the least and I wish someone had warned me to pay closer attention.

I would recommend this to anyone who loves great sci-fi with a believable cohesive future and tons of action (oh yeah, the mystery is pretty slick to).

PS. Don't get me wrong, I loved Snow Crash too.