"Altered Carbon" the style

[Michelle]

someone in the intro thread said they abandoned ship on this one due to the overly thick metaphoric descriptions. in the discussion on the Hendrix a while ago, I mentioned that I thought a lot of Morgan's writing style was overly contrived, that he was perhaps too obvious in his pursuit of coolness. the prose style in here is certainly laid on thick; does it work for you? having never read any Dashiel Hammett, I'm taking it on faith that this is noir in his style, what do you think?

for the most part, I'm pretty easily sucked in by all the flashy awesomeness on display. while some of the colorful turns of phrase jarred me out of the story, others were deliciously clever. I'm in love with (having selected weapons for the assault on head in the clouds):

"it was the single forgiving phrase in the syntax of weaponry I had strapped about me. the rest were unequivocal sentences of death."

got any fave figures of Kovacs' speech? any that irritate you to no end?

[Jed]

Well, Morgan has far too much SHRUGGING going on. Everybody shrugs (maybe not the Hendrix) constantly.

It may be an imperfect book but it is still one of my favorite books of all time and I've read thousands of books. It has that "certain something" I crave - it keeps on moving without too many long, pointless, irrelevant conversations.

[AJ]

Yeah, I enjoyed his writing style a lot. I just didn't like his sci-fi concepts. I will have to review for special phrases that really struck me but there were many.

Anyone read his fantasy novel? Did that differ in prose significantly?The Steel Remains

[Jed]

The Steel Remains is the Altered Carbon of REALLY dark fantasy. Very similar in style - WONDERFUL!

Of course, there is the trademarked Morgan shrugging, meth and mayhem.

AJ wrote: "Yeah, I enjoyed his writing style a lot. I just didn't like his sci-fi concepts. I will have to review for special phrases that really struck me but there were many.

Anyone read his fantasy no..."

[Weenie]

Agree with Jed here, The Steel Remains is dark, perhaps too dark for some. Can't say I'm bothered about the shrugging and Altered Carbon is probably one of my favourite sci-fi books I've read thus far in terms of 'wow' factor.

[Danielle The Book Huntress]

I liked his writing style, and I was very engaged. There was a beauty to it that allowed me to deal with the dark subject matter, violence, and bad language.