book data
379 ratings, 3.63 average rating, 70 reviews
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published
May 17th 2007
(first published 2008)
by Gollancz
binding
Hardcover, 400 pages
isbn
0575075139
(isbn13: 9780575075139)
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 566)
Read in February, 2008
Richard K. Morgan is kind of hot shit in the sci-fi world these days, but this book does not demonstrate why. At 550 pages, it's a ridiculously long thriller wrapped in a shroud of William Gibson-esque cyperpunk. Morgan has a lot of interesting ideas about human genetic modification in the future, and how it all ties into the political intrigue of the time, but his actual plot, at least in this book, is an overly complicated murder mystery that fails to pay off in any way whatsoever. The main ch...more
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Read in August, 2007
recommends it for:
those who like their foresight served with a strong hint of violent smackdown
I really enjoyed this book, Morgan's latest, though it did feel like a guilty pleasure. It sits in the same box for me as the films Minority Report or I, Robot in that it was a simple story made engaging by entertaining action scenes but set within a thoughtfully constructed sci-fi world. The characters are all killers and the story is a noir detective thriller that revolves around deception, power, secrecy, sex and violence. But the events of the story are only the underbelly of a highly plausi...more
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Read in September, 2008
This was ok, it had some interesting ideas about what it means to be human, and an especially bleak look at our possible future, but besides that the book was very predictable, even when it was throwing in big plot curve balls. For all the convoluted twist and turns the book is essentially an action / adventure story in the vein of something like the Penetrator. A big guy who women can't keep their hands off of goes around and kills all the bad guys that get in the way between him and his righ...more
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I was pretty thoroughly entertained by this. Morgan's really got his hard-boiled loner character down, and this is an inspired version: guy's genetically engineered to be that character. It's more complicated than that, a whole near-future scenario in which the existence of a few variant human sub-species has become a political issue, along with the Mars colony, and the politics of the book is smart and pretty interesting. (The bonus is that the the US has split into the liberal, forward-looking...more
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The first third of the book is awesome. Each chapter or so is told from a different (and new) person's perspective - each of whom sees a different version of what is happening, slightly overlapping with the others. What a new character in one chapter sees suddenly explains to the reader what it was that a character in an earlier chapter was seeing. The pace is fast, and the constant changes made me think that the book wouldn't have a central character and would all be told as a single story with...more
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The latest from (probably) the best contemporary author of "hard" science fiction thrillers suffered the bizarre fate of being published under the alternate title Thirteen in the U.S., presumably because American readers might be put off by the idea of an action filled, hard-boiled science fiction novel that (big gasp!) addresses the subject of race. Black Man is easily Morgan's best novel to date, combining the thoroughly detailed 100-years-in-the-future setting with decent and detail...more
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Read in November, 2007
This book turned out to be pretty great. Seems to take place in the same timeline as the Altered Carbon series, just much earlier.
The main character is a genentic creation, a thirteen. Thirteens are throwbacks to super-alpha males that humanity bred out around the time of civilization. Tough, quick, paranoid and sociopathic (by human standards) they were created to fight for various nations. They have since been rounded up and either stuck in interment camps or sent to mars.
The main characte...more
The main character is a genentic creation, a thirteen. Thirteens are throwbacks to super-alpha males that humanity bred out around the time of civilization. Tough, quick, paranoid and sociopathic (by human standards) they were created to fight for various nations. They have since been rounded up and either stuck in interment camps or sent to mars.
The main characte...more
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Prelude: Carl Marsalis, the protagonist of this novel, should be played by Idris Elba. He would rock the shit out of this role.
Nature vs. Nurture, Black vs. White, Blue State vs. Red State and Faith vs. Reason collide with lots of sex and violence in this modern Blade Runner. If you are upset by the graphic sex but not upset by the vicious violence that counter-balances it, I don't know what to tell ya other than Morg...more
Nature vs. Nurture, Black vs. White, Blue State vs. Red State and Faith vs. Reason collide with lots of sex and violence in this modern Blade Runner. If you are upset by the graphic sex but not upset by the vicious violence that counter-balances it, I don't know what to tell ya other than Morg...more
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Read in September, 2007
recommends it for:
the Morgan-obsessed
The Altered Carbon trilogy is one of my favorite series of all time, so I was skeptical when I saw that Morgan's new book sort of reprises the idea. Once again, a disaffected genetically modified/govt-trained assassain goes AWOL, falling in love (as much as his hardbitten, macho heart can process that emotion) with a hot female cop with a taste for raunchy sex along the way. Okay, not a bad formula. And Morgan gives great techo-noir, hideous scenes with the autosurgeons, colorfully plausible fu...more
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There's been a lot of talk in the last several years about the deep, even, and almost polar divide that exists between segments of the US. This divide is largely political, but the political aspect of it merely reflects the ideological core. Combine a very plausible application of this rift with economic and globalization factors, add the exponential increase of technology, and let it bake for a hundred years, give or take, and you get Thirteen.
Richard K. Morgan's newest novel is, for all in...more
Richard K. Morgan's newest novel is, for all in...more
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Read in November, 2007
Richard Morgan is the alleged King of Cyber-Punk Science fiction. Note, I said "alleged". This book was heavy with a confluence of many different ideas, which I liked. He specifically focused on if Hunter Gatherers were better than Current man by using his protagonist, Carl Marsalis, a variant 13 from the Hunter Gatherer era pitted against the plotting minds of "Cudlips" the groupthink representation of present day man. This was set 100 years into the future, America no l...more
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Read in January, 2008
I am a fan of Richard K Morgan books, and I was very much looking forward to this one. To be honest I was more than a little dissapointed. Yes, there is plenty of Morgan's excellent violence to turn the pages, but the charcters are near cliches. The main reason you feel for them is the investment of reading time you've already put in waiting for the author to make more of them. While I enjoy his action, I feel that Morgan lets it carry this book. I'd be very interested to see if Morgan could wri...more
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Read in July, 2008
I was so excited to get the new Morgan book that I went as far as to buy it hardcover -- something I rarely do with fiction books. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I was quite disappointed. Sure, there were the kind of cool technologies and neat ideas that get sci-fi geeks like me going. There was even plenty of Richard Morgan's signature visceral grit and sex and violence. Nevertheless, I found myself not excited about picking it up again, and glad when I was finally done with it. ...more
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Read in September, 2007
recommends it for:
the same folks that read Altered Carbon
An interesting book that takes a futuristic look at race and exclusion. Specifically the xenophobia and hatred that this futuristic world has for the thirteens, genetically engineered warriors. Much like Replicants from Blade Runner, Thirteens are considered so dangerous that it is illegal for them to live on Earth. The story's protagonist, Carl Marsalis, is an exception in the fact that he is an operative for the UN (read Bounty Hunter). Until another Thirteen smuggles himself back t...more
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Read in July, 2007
Morgan has again packed some sharp observations about society and politics into an action-packed mystery. Interestingly, this is the second novel I have read recently whose plot turns, at least in part, on the use of genetic engineering to bring back a subspecies of homo sapiens. The other is "Blindsight" by Peter Watts. In Watts book, genetic engineers have recreated the subspecies that gave rise to the vampire legends; Morgan posits a kind of feral human suppressed when hunter-ga...more
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Read in June, 2007
recommends it for:
Bridget
While not Morgan's most rigourously original books (he employs more previously expressed themes, ideas and technologies then ever before) this is far and away his best book.
A masterful dissection of the disassemnbling of the Union, of the rise of an anti-millitant Eurpoe and the fall out of using technology to further the blighted causes of Manifest Destiny. Add to that mix a furious diatribe on the futility and ignorance of prejudicial hatred and you have a genre erasing masterpiece.
The...more
A masterful dissection of the disassemnbling of the Union, of the rise of an anti-millitant Eurpoe and the fall out of using technology to further the blighted causes of Manifest Destiny. Add to that mix a furious diatribe on the futility and ignorance of prejudicial hatred and you have a genre erasing masterpiece.
The...more
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Read in September, 2008
Here is how the rating scheme works.
3 stars means I finished it, OK, but the author has done better in the past, and when he did it wasn't no 5 star effort.
On the other hand Morgan is contemporary and reasonably good. Who knows when he will produce that perfect magnum opus? So wee keep reading.
Expect from this book the Morgon usual. Characters getting angry with each other. Notice the amazing parallels to background setup despite the fact that this appears in a universe independe...more
3 stars means I finished it, OK, but the author has done better in the past, and when he did it wasn't no 5 star effort.
On the other hand Morgan is contemporary and reasonably good. Who knows when he will produce that perfect magnum opus? So wee keep reading.
Expect from this book the Morgon usual. Characters getting angry with each other. Notice the amazing parallels to background setup despite the fact that this appears in a universe independe...more
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Read in September, 2007
recommends it for:
no one
If Richard K. Morgan were a more able writer, this wouldn't feel like paint by numbers sci-fi. Still, right in the middle, we spend about 50 pages watching someone die, and in that, the book finds a heart. A heart that then gets torn out by some inconsiderate writing that traps its characters in tiny little boxes labeled 'stereotype' and 'preconceived notion', but it was still there, at least.
Although I do applaud the rough suff...more
Although I do applaud the rough suff...more
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Read in December, 2007
i'm absurdly close to the end of this book, just haven't quite finished. initially, this seemed to be in the same 'verse, if at a different time, as the Takeshi Kovacs novels, which interested me a great deal, but those references seemed to fade away. maybe that was intentional - i'm not sure. regardless, i can't help but report that i am slightly disappointed with this book. Morgan never fails to produce a solid plot, great descriptions, and fabulous fight scenes. but somewhere in this novel, i...more
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Read in July, 2007
What a nice return to form for Richard Morgan! Market Forces wasn't a bad book, by any means, but I felt like I was missing something; whatever it was is certainly back.
Thirteen actually has a *lot* in common with Morgan's original threesome about the mercenary/detective/whatever Takeshi Kovacs, but I honestly didn't twig to that until the last few pages of the book. That's a testament to how engrossing Morgan's storytelling remains, I think.
Summary: futuristic noir, very enjoyable; the ...more
Thirteen actually has a *lot* in common with Morgan's original threesome about the mercenary/detective/whatever Takeshi Kovacs, but I honestly didn't twig to that until the last few pages of the book. That's a testament to how engrossing Morgan's storytelling remains, I think.
Summary: futuristic noir, very enjoyable; the ...more
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