Name: Thin Air
ISBN: 9780575075146

Richard Morgan

Richard Morgan has always been one of our most successful SF authors with his fast-moving and brutal storylines, blistering plots and a powerful social conscience behind his work. And now he's back, with his first SF novel for eight years . . . and it promises to be a publication to remember. An ex-corporate enforcer, Hakan Veil, is forced to bodyguard Madison Madekwe, part of a colonial audit team investigating a disappeared lottery winner on Mars. But when Madekwe is abducted, and Hakan nearly killed, the investigation takes him farther and deeper than he had ever expected. And soon Hakan discovers the heavy price he may have to pay to learn the truth.

Thin Air

Gavin

Mind candy. Blasted through it in two sittings. 

People persist in calling Morgan's writing noir, but it's too free and fulfilled to be noir - his protagonists get laid all the time, his protagonists swear, his protagonists dish out a great deal more than they get. Morgan makes cyberpunk look subtle. But it's cool stuff and I've read everything he's written, even though half of it reuses the same kind of super-protagonist, the same kind of dialogue, the same kind of gimmick weapons, the same kind of grimdark Chomskyan geopolitics (arespolitics). But the prose is mostly fast and smart enough to carry it off, again.

Ideas:

* Codeflies, artificial mosquitoes as delivery mechanism for compulsory updates to implants. Hellish.
* Placenames on Mars: Bradbury City, Musk Plaza, Hayek Street.

Richard K. Morgan

An atmospheric tale of corruption and abduction set on Mars, from the author of the award-winning science fiction novel Altered Carbon, now an exciting new series from Netflix. From the moment Richard K. Morgan's dazzling debut, Altered Carbon, burst onto the scene, it was clear that a distinctive new voice had arrived to shake up science fiction. His subsequent novels--including the sequels Broken Angels and Woken Furies--confirmed him as a master of hard-boiled futuristic thrillers. Now Morgan returns to the world of SF noir with a riveting tale of crime, corruption, and deadly crisis on a planet teetering close to the edge. On a Mars where ruthless corporate interests violently collide with a homegrown independence movement as Earth-based overlords battle for profits and power, Hakan Veil is an ex-professional enforcer equipped with military-grade body tech that's made him a human killing machine. But he's had enough of the turbulent red planet, and all he wants is a ticket back home--which is just what he's offered by the Earth Oversight organization, in exchange for being the bodyguard for an EO investigator. It's a beyond-easy gig for a heavy hitter like Veil . . . until it isn't. When Veil's charge, Madison Madekwe, starts looking into the mysterious disappearance of a lottery winner, she stirs up a hornet's nest of intrigue and murder. And the deeper Veil is drawn into the dangerous game being played, the more long-buried secrets claw their way to the Martian surface. Now it's the expert assassin on the wrong end of a lethal weapon--as Veil stands targeted by powerful enemies hellbent on taking him down, by any means necessary.