Broken Angels: A Takeshi Kovacs Novel

published	2007 by Del Rey
binding	Mass Market Paperback
isbn	0345457722 (isbn13: 9780345457721)
pages	544
description	Critics have compared Richard Morgan's first novel, Altered Carbon, to the classic hardboiled fiction of Raymond Chandler. The comparison does...more [close] Critics have compared Richard Morgan's first novel, Altered Carbon, to the classic hardboiled fiction of Raymond Chandler. The comparison doesn't accurately describe Morgan's second novel, Broken Angels. Morgan's prose never approaches Chandler's metaphoric excess, and Morgan's antihero, Takeshi Kovacs, doesn't wisecrack nearly as often as Chandler's hero, Philip Marlowe. Also, Kovacs's far-future universe is considerably darker than Marlowe's noir world. In Kovacs's universe, high-tech implants called "stacks" record memory and personality; this means soldiers can be sent to their deaths, have their stacks implanted in new bodies, and be sent to their deaths again, and again, and again. Generals needn't quibble about wasting lives in massacres or nuclear explosions. The slaughtered soldiers will soon be back in action--unless their stacks aren't recovered. Then their consciousness will go mad, isolated in an indestructible, inescapable virtual reality. The proper term for the Takeshi Kovacs novels isn't "hardboiled." It's "brutal." The Martians disappeared long ago, but they left behind their star gates, which have allowed humanity to spread across the galaxy--and bring warfare to the stars. As Broken Angels opens, Takeshi Kovacs is a lieutenant in humankind's most feared mercenary company, but rumors of an astonishing archaelogical discovery inspire his desertion. Humans have never found a Martian starship until, perhaps, now. If the rumors are true, and the ruthless Kovacs can take possession of the unprecedented relic, he will make his fortune. But if he fails in his quest, he may find himself imprisoned in high-tech hell for eternity. --Cynthia Ward [close]
date added	01-21-07 edit book

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James, rated it:

(review of isbn 0345457714)

11/27/07

Read in January, 2004

recommends it for: cyberpunk fans

The followon to Altered Carbon. This book sends Kovacs to war, and confronts the legacy of the Martians head on.

The Martians, as they were introduced in Altered Carbon, were a race of sentient birdlike creatures, that have, apparently, been long extinct by the time their relics were discovered on Mars. Now a new archeological find in the middle of a war zone has corporate players scrambling to find it, understand it, and exploit it as quickly as possible, and woe to anyone who gets in the w...more The followon to Altered Carbon. This book sends Kovacs to war, and confronts the legacy of the Martians head on.

The Martians, as they were introduced in Altered Carbon, were a race of sentient birdlike creatures, that have, apparently, been long extinct by the time their relics were discovered on Mars. Now a new archeological find in the middle of a war zone has corporate players scrambling to find it, understand it, and exploit it as quickly as possible, and woe to anyone who gets in the way.

Long and harsh. It's a good, if bleak, story, though for all the length, for all the details we get about Kovacs' life that we didn't get in the first book, the characters aren't as vivid as in Altered Carbon, and when he says early on "it's the closest I came to a victory on Sanction IV" early on, he's not pissing about. There are damn few sympathetic characters in this story. Kovacs' brutal nature is more in evidence, and Morgan kills off most of the sympathetic characters with gruesome efficiency, and there are so many of them, and so much violence and gore that does get excessive after a while.

The biggest problem I had with it was buying the Martians themselves. Morgan works very hard to create a species that is "intrinsically and irreconcilably unhuman". The problem is, while this is realistic, it also makes the Martians seem less real, because the reader doesn't ever really get to know much about them except the scattered fragments that archeology has dug up, and the politics of the day that surround trying to interpret them. Morgan's making a point here, and it's an interesting one - that governments favor interpretations of the past that benefit them - but it doesn't give you much of a reference you can trust about anything anywhere in the story.

Still. The book is a good war story, a fairly realistic one, from what I've read about nonfiction war. It's ugly, and it's mean, and you get it. So a mixed review, and dock him a couple stars for it, although having fished through it for the quotes, I'm probably going to have to reread it now....less

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Broken Angels: A Takeshi Kovacs Novel

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