Name: Vojtech's review of Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
Item: Altered Carbon
Rating: 3
Author: Vojtech

Richard K. Morgan

A stunning debut sci-fi/noir thriller reminiscent of Blade Runner--and the beginning of a new series featuring a one-of-a-kind anti-hero: ex-UN envoy Takashi Kovaks.

Altered Carbon

In a twenty-fifth-century world in which death is nearly obsolete, thanks to a technology that allows a person's consciousness to be downloaded into a new body, former U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs, re-sleeved into a new body after a brutal death, finds himself caught in the middle of a deadly far-reaching conspiracy that could have horrifying repercussions. Reprint.

Carlo Zottmann

Vojtech

Luke Harkness

A fantastic sci fi world that really drew me in with its initial premise. The story diverted quite a bit and it feels like the writer may well have not originally had the plot direction going the way it did when he began. However with interesting characters, continuing surprises and a, as aforementioned, fantastic sci-fi world, it kept me intrigued for the majority of the story.

Carter Rabasa

I wish half stars were a thing. 3 1/2 stars feels right here. It's a hard boiled whodunit detective thriller that takes place a few hundred years in the future. Characters are thinly developed and there's plenty of sex and violence for Netflix to work with on the TV adaption.

altlovesbooks

Death, where is thy sting?

I watched the Netflix series a bit ago, so reading the book seemed like the next logical step. I love those old detective noir mystery atmospheres, I love cyberpunk atmospheres, and the idea that your consciousness can be transferred ("re-sleeved") as often as you have the cash for it makes for an interesting premise. This seemed like a slam dunk for me. 

In many ways it was. Kovacs is very much an anti-hero; you're supposed to dislike him. I liked the moral ambiguity he brought to the story, and his jaded war vet background made for some interesting philosophical considerations he has throughout the story. I liked being strung along on this cyberpunk mystery full of people with too much cash and not a lot of perspective left after being re-sleeved for over a century. I liked the gritty action, the take on a futuristic America, all of it. I had a lot of fun reading this book.

I think my only real miss is the ending. To keep it vague (since this is a mystery at its core), all throughout the first 80-85% of the book the author keeps you very informed as to what the main character is doing, what they're thinking, the connections they're making with regards to the mystery they're unraveling, and it feels like you're right there with him in this investigation. Just when you start closing in on the ending though, the author starts skipping whole scenes that you know are taking place, all in the name of preserving The Big Reveal. Don't get me wrong, the pieces are all put back in place for you at the end, but tonally it felt like the ending was played out of order in terms of putting the pieces together. A very minor quibble, I know.

This book is very much one of those either you love or you hate, from reading the other reviews. And I really, really liked it.

Gavin

Class act: cyberpunk without cheap gothic neon and lolspeak; noir without cartoonish conventions. A meditation on identity and consent via sex and violence. Genuinely. The Scene: Consciousness can be up- and downloaded. In this world, if you are rich enough, you do not die. If you're richer than that, you get uploaded into a young clone of yourself - otherwise you take whatever marginalised corpse is going and adjust your sense of self to fit. 

He picks out implications brilliantly (e.g. what happens to celebrity culture?). The inevitable neologisms are excellent, intensely suggestive of the new culture's inner life: death is just "storage"; bodies are just "sleeves" and to be reincarnated is to be "sleeved"; a plasma gun is a "sunjet". Murder is just "organic damage". Catholics are (once again) the world's underclass - unable to travel interstellar because it involves casual storage (suicide) and resleeving (heresy), and killed with near-impunity because they alone cannot testify at their own murder trials. Cartoonish moments: our anti-hero Takeshi Kovacs is attacked or apprehended 
  7
times in the first 150 pages.) People transition gender with regularity. Morgan makes a bold essentialist statement, which is somewhat backed-up: 

  To be a woman was a sensory experience beyond the male... To a man, skin was a barrier. To a woman it was an organ of contact. That had its disadvantages.

 (Kovacs is tortured, horrifically, as a woman.) Advertising can be beamed obtrusively into your mind. The UN has become a Shady Galactic Empire. It is strongly suggested - not least by our trained-psychopath protagonist - that this transhuman society is more psychopathic, owing to the lower stakes of violence, injury, and taboo-breaking. Gritty but not just gratuitous. Better than Gibson.

High Fidelity

It was everything I love in the noir and SF genres. 
Impressive wold building, it really shows he cares about what he created. The characters are interesting enough and how they intertwine is well done. 
*full review to come*

Todd Luallen

Not a fan of the erotica in this book. I wish there was some sort of rating system for books, so I could stay clear of the X rated books without having to waste my money and time on them. The whole idea of re-sleeving was interesting, and I'm sure allows for some interesting twists to a mystery/thriller. But I did not finish, because of the graphic sexual content. This was my last Goodreads Daily deal recommendation that I'm going to take a chance on.

Richard Morgan

Science fiction. Takeshi Kovacs is an Envoy, a soldier trained to withstand transfer from one body to the next. He is employed (resleeved) by a Meth (as in Methuselah) billionaire who was killed (and subsequently resleeved) and who wants to know how and why

Charles Siboto

I love the detective/noir feel to Morgan's story as you follow protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, through a futuristic Earth.

The TV show is probably more fun than this.

Xavier Roy

I read this after watching the Netflix series. 

The background of who Kovacs is not that clear in the book. Maybe the rest of the series deals with it. I've to find out.

I felt there were lots of gaps in the story.

Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs Novels)

Melody Izard

OOO eee that's a complicated world right there. Keeping up with what chemical does what to which sleeve and where the essence of who someone actually IS resides makes my head spin. Porn doesn't just pop up on your computer - it assaults you with street-casts if you wander too close to their curbside transmissions. There is every sort of virtual and actual sex and, if you have the money - an ability to live forever in a fresh, young body. 

This ability to live forever has its drawbacks. Kicks just keep get harder to find. And these cyber-vampire-like rich people can feel like they have all the answers and are apt to ride high on a big ol' power trip. 

Takeshi Lev Kovacs is kind of a super soldier who is hired by one of these ancient super-rich and is brought back to life to save the day. Kind of a tricked out deputy dog. And I understand that his character continues to kick ass in 2 other books by Morgan. 

It's written a bit like there is a prequel - but there is not.

Micchi von Cross

** spoiler alert **
           Spoilers for both the book and the Netflix series ahead!

It absolutely breaks my heart to write this review. The Altered Carbon Netflix series is so good. Intricate, nuanced, part film noir mystery and part high-adrenaline action and part weird future shit. I had hoped the books would be as good, if not better.

I was very, very wrong. In fact, it seems like most of the parts of the series I absolutely fell in love with were deviations and changes from the book. For me, what most exemplifies this is Reileen Kawahara. 

In the series, I was extremely invested in Reileen. I felt emotionally invested in her, every step of the way. I felt emotionally invested in Kovacs' relationship and reactions. It felt like a gut punch to learn, along with Kovacs, that his little sister had become an entire monster, beyond even the monster Kovacs himself could be...and even then I could understand and see how she got there, why she got there. She was such a good antagonist.

In the book, Reileen Kawahara is an incredibly one-note villain, complete with dry and boring monologues. Her story isn't explored. Kovacs has no relation to her except "she threw me some work and also I hate her". She has no personality until the very end, when her calm facade doesn't just crack, it explodes. And I should have been cheering when she gets her comeuppance, but...by that point I didn't *care*, I just wanted to be done with this book.

Ben Nathan

The story telling is really good. The story itself is well woven in a rich world. I loved all of the detective bits to it. The thing that kept turning me off was that it felt like the writer HATED women and I just cringed at how they were described and characterized and even worse his sex scenes were just ew.

Juozas Salna

it is just sex and violence...
quite a lot of characters i don't care about and always forget their names. so when they return after a few chapters I don't know who they are and what they want.
already forgot why everybody wanted to kill each other.

or maybe i have early dementia and cannot read complex books ;]

Anyaconda

I loved the Netflix show, but boy did I miss out on the details. The book gives you all that and it's definitely different from the show. Some names and relationships are different too, but it was fab and I'm looking forward continuing with this series 🙂

Ben Booth

Sherany

In a twenty-fifth century world in which death is nearly obsolete, former UN envoy Takeshi Kovacs, re-sleeved into a new body after a brutal death, finds himself caught in the middle of a deadly far-reaching conspiracy.

Vojtech &
Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

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