I've been a big fan of R. Morgan ultra violent, ultra dark and quite explicit novels since his extraordinary debut Altered Carbon. Though in his last novels the repetitions of themes, plot and gimmicks became a bit tiresome, in The Steel Remains Mr. Morgan moves to epic/adventure fantasy and reinvigorates said themes. While longtime readers of his novels will be less surprised at the twists and turns of this novel because of the echoes of previous works, there is a lot of new stuff here and the 3 main characters especially Ringil who gets the most face time are as engaging as ever.

Not for the squeamish or easily offended - explicit descriptions of torture, mutilations, explicit mostly homosexual sex both with humans and human like aliens/wraiths and repeated profanities fill up the book - The Steel Remains is a very dense book, gripping and with a reasonable resolution of its original issues, but as with most first novels in a series, the larger issues just now start to impact our characters.

The best Morgan since his first two novels, Altered Carbon and Broken Angels