Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1) in The Sword and Laser

Apr 18, 2009 Brad rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2013, detective, exceeded-my-expectations, sci-fi, you-are-a-true-vulgarian-aren-t-you

Well, well, well, this took me by surprise. I had fairly high expectations for Richard K. Morgan's first Takeshi Kovacs novel for a number of reasons: 1. many of y'all love these books, and plenty of you have told me to read them; 2. I have read and loved the first two parts of his A Land Fit for Heroes trilogy; 3. this book had seriously fast Hollywood attention; 4. I dig Sci-Fi.

So I tried to read it and reached page 10, then I quit. Then I tried to read it again and reached page 12, then I qu Well, well, well, this took me by surprise. I had fairly high expectations for Richard K. Morgan's first Takeshi Kovacs novel for a number of reasons: 1. many of y'all love these books, and plenty of you have told me to read them; 2. I have read and loved the first two parts of his A Land Fit for Heroes trilogy; 3. this book had seriously fast Hollywood attention; 4. I dig Sci-Fi.

So I tried to read it and reached page 10, then I quit. Then I tried to read it again and reached page 12, then I quit. But this last time I reached page 13, then kept going and going and going. It was even better than I expected.

Morgan smashes together Gibson's Sprawl with Banks' Culture with his own brand of sensual violence and comes up with a society advanced to near immortality without ever unshackling itself from market forces and the power elite, maintaining, further entrenching and magnifying our current inequities and iniquities. It is all done in the voice of Kovacs himself -- Envoy, mercenary with a salient conscience, sleeving master, and all around bad ass -- who turns out to be one of the finest first person narrators I've read. Whether he was in a fevered drug state, double sleeved, doing battle, or busy between a pair of muscled, toned legs, I believed in his existence.

Hell, Kovacs is so genuine I wouldn't be surprised if Morgan somehow tapped into Kovacs stack and ripped off his tale wholesale. He is just that real to me.

When I finished the book today, I drove into town and went straight to the bookstore, not imagining for a second that Broken Angels wouldn't be on the shelf. I didn't want to end my conversation with Kovacs, but it wasn't there. None of the Kovacs books were. If I'd had a splinter gun I might have taken off a head on my way out the door, but I had to settle for a head shake and a sneer. I guess I am going to have to wait a day or two longer (more like a week or two) to hear Kovacs whisper in my brain once again. I wonder if I could wangle a medically induced coma until my book arrives in the mail. Would that make the books arrival feel faster or slower? Hmmm. ...more

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Feb 18, 2018 Jessica rated it liked it

Shelves: popsugar-challenge-2018-complete

This book takes a fascinating premise and completely squanders it. The notion of sleeving is a good concept, and I was excited to read about it. I had a few issues:

1. Most of the women in this novel exist only to be attractive, and to be into our narrator. And since he doesn't really seem like a sparkling conversationalist, I don't get it.

2. The violence. Look, I'm not a prude. This may be one of the few times that the amount of violence in a book really turned me off. It certainly made me not c ...more

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Apr 19, 2010 Alexander Veee rated it really liked it

Shelves: books-i-own, read-2010, science-fiction, hardboiled-fiction, cyberpunk

"As I advanced into the room, he glanced up.

"Jack? YOu finished al---" He stared at the gun in my hands without comprehension, then as the muzzle came to within half a meter of his face a note of asperity crept into his voice. "Listen, I didn't dial for this routine."

"On the house," I said dispassionately, and watched as the clutch of monomolecular shards tore his face apart. His hands flew up from between his legs to cover the wounds, and he flopped over sideways on the bed, gut-deep noises gri ...more

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Jun 23, 2012 Nomad Scry rated it liked it

One of my pet peeves are bullshit sex scenes. Is sex scenes? Whatever. Altered Carbon has one early on that really grated on my nerves. And then, somehow, redeems it later on with another one that isn't pointless because of the counter balance provided by the early one.

I respect how Morgan did what he did, but that doesn't mean I liked it. ...more

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