# Book Review: Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan



## Coolhand (Dec 19, 2006)

I've raved about this book before, but never in review form, so...

Short version: Ice-cool, razor-smart, eye-gougingly violent sci-fi noir.

Long Version:

HERE BE SPOILERS! ENTER AT THINE OWN RISK!

There’s a great moment in a Discworld book where someone states that only two things are certain, Death and Taxes. Death replies that, whilst this might be true, _he_ only turns up once. 

If Pratchett’s Death were to exist in the world of Altered Carbon, he’d be getting a lot of repeat business. 

Altered Carbon is a hard boiled detective novel set in 26th century, where death doesn’t have to be fatal. An implant known as a cortical stack is placed in the base of the skull, recording your mind and, should you snuff it, this copy of your mind can be downloaded into a new body. Or into a Matrix-like Virtuality. Or just stored somewhere until it is needed again. However, like all technologies the rich get the best deals and the financial costs mean that for most people, one or two resurrections is all you get.

This is the world of Takeshi Kovacs, a former UN elite secret agent known as an Envoy, trained to jump from body as though he were just changing clothes. Now self employed, he’s no stranger to death (he gets blown away in the first ten pages of the book then resurrected) or violence (Envoys, almost by their nature, are a pretty sociopathic bunch of nutters) so he's the perfect man to hire if you need something dirty doing. In this case, the man who needs dirty doing is a freshly resurrected billionaire who believes his last death was down to foul play. He wants Kovacs to find the killer. So off goes our cynical, burned out hero, into the dark underbelly of 26th century New York… 

Altered Carbon is a book that could have gone very wrong very quickly. From the cortical stack concept to the blending of film noir and gritty sci-fi, in the hands of a lesser writer this could have been a train-wreck.

It isn’t.

The atmospheric plot is tight and tense. The prose is visceral poetry. The ideas and world are deep and satisfying. The characters interesting and vivid. And best of all, anti-hero’s have a new god.
Kovacs be thy name. 
Simply put, he is Jack Bauer Squared. Bauer Cubed. Bauer to the Power of Infinity.

For example. About a third of the way through the book, Kovacs is captured by the bad guys and horribly tortured. (And I mean _horribly_) Via a lot of cunning and a little brute force, he manages to escape his captors and set himself free. Now, most protagonists who’ve gone through what he has would limp off, curl up into a ball somewhere and try to recuperate. Maybe dribble and whimper a bit. Possibly have an psychotic episode.

Kovacs however simply stomps back to his hotel, grabs some guns, _stomps_ _back to the torture facility from which he’s just escaped_ and shoots the whole bloody lot of them.

Later on he downloads his mind into two separate bodies. Whilst one of them goes off to engage in sex with a femme fatal and her 50 clones, the other, clad in a custom made tech-ninja body, sneaks into a secret high security base to accomplish a dangerous mission. 

Seriously. 

That’s how cool he is. In fact he is beyond cool. He redefines cool. He makes the Fonze look like a rather flustered geography teacher trying to keep control of Class 7A whilst making a panicked and awkward attempt to hit on the pretty art teacher with a chat-up line that he got from a Christmas cracker. 

Richard Morgan is quite possibly one of the best writers I’ve ever read. This is one of the best books I've ever read.

Oh, and it has a quirky Gothic assassin named Trepp who likes cats. So maybe Death is in this book after all...


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## Connavar (Aug 16, 2007)

Great review im reading it right now and agree totaly its a great book and one of the coolest main characters i have read.

Its a very good prose to for this kind of SF noir. The writer shows alot of skill.


He really is Jack Baur in a gritty sci fi, when he went back to get revenge on his torturers and everyone near them that was like wow....

When he qouted the philosofer from his home planet and thought _"Time to get personal "  damn..._


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## SteveThorn (Sep 7, 2007)

I was down&out sick last year and my wife bought me some books to while away the time and Altered Carbon was one of them.  To this day I had never gotten around to reading it.  Okay, I'll be starting it tonight.  Good review, Coolhand.


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## Ginkus (Oct 9, 2007)

Must...read...

Seriously good review too.


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## gully_foyle (Jan 20, 2008)

There is a lot in this book, and I mean a lot. The concepts as described by Coolhand are not just background technology, but the basis of the plot, and for that Morgan gets full points. Kovacs is brutal to the nth degree, but he is also Mr Supermorality, unless the offer of hot sex with a genetically altered super rich super hot 300 year old is on the table. However, as said, it is a dense book, and deserves to be read from start to finish in a couple of days, not in the three weeks it has taken a tired and harried father/husband/employee to read it. I find myself losing track of characters and action sequences. My other complaint is that I don't think it maintained the detective noir tone that it started off with and which I really liked. He started off like a Marlowe (indeed it started off a bit like The Big Sleep), but turned into Arnie pretty quick. I've avoided watching 24, so I don't know what Jack Bauer is like.

All in all, a good modern hard SF book. Not for the squeamish.


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## Connavar (Jan 24, 2008)

Jack Bauer is practicly a violent Marlowe.


I agree he didnt keep the great detective Noir feeling in the hole book but it was enough to make you like Takeshi and his story.

The world was sick though and i understand the reason it got more violent and dark at the later parts.

What i liked was that the violent ways of Takeshi was cause of his peronality and history.  What do you expect really of a guy that was a Yakuza punk as teen.  Also his world forced him to be violent.

Gully what did you think of the world, the sleeving etc  That creeped me alittle thinking how unnatural their world was.


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## kaelcarp (Jan 27, 2008)

I've read three books by Morgan: This, _Broken Angels_, and _Market Forces_. All three have been very good, fun reads. Morgan is an extremely talented writer with a really good (and extremely cynical) head for the political structures of the worlds he creates. I intend to read anything else I can get my hands on, starting with _Woken Furies_ next.

The only word of warning I might give is that his stuff is not quite for readers who want a realistic prediction of the future in terms of technology. Morgan's future is a lot closer to the present than any real 26th century is likely to be. This is not the sort of science fiction where it's really trying to give that. It's not hard sf. The future is basically like the present with some big tweaks, like space travel and cortical stacks. 

But it's not trying to be that, and that's fine with me (I've always been more into what I'd call social science fiction).


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## Connavar (Feb 4, 2008)

Its a cyberpunk book, i doubt people will read this for their Hard SF need.


Many of the cyberpunk books i have read are like that, the world is similar no matter how long in the future it is.  I think its almost expected of the subgenre.

Its no Foundation like SF where humans live very different future.

Although i must say the sleeving,the way of travel,the lenght of their lifes are as much future you can get and as much different you can get from today's world.


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## kaelcarp (Feb 4, 2008)

I didn't really read it as a cyberpunk book. I guess it is one (I haven't read much in the genre, so I'm not the best judge). I've always thought of cyberpunk as being set in the not-too-distant future. This is a very far future novel. Am I wrong to think of cyberpunk that way?


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## Connavar (Feb 4, 2008)

kaelcarp said:


> I didn't really read it as a cyberpunk book. I guess it is one (I haven't read much in the genre, so I'm not the best judge). I've always thought of cyberpunk as being set in the not-too-distant future. This is a very far future novel. Am I wrong to think of cyberpunk that way?




I think the older cyberpunk are more near future.  I have read newer ones that were 400-500 years in the future or even more.

I dont think how long in the future they are important anymore.

There are many elements in this book that is very common in cyberpunk books, when you read more of the subgenre you will see clearly which elements they are.


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## Anarchon (Feb 4, 2008)

Hi, Connavar,

Can you help me with my list of Cyberpunk novels?

I am new to the sub-genre, and I 'd like to make a list of readable, but also non-recommended books. 

Richard Morgan seems very interesting.

My question is here:

Cyberpunk novels, from the ancestors to contemporary authors


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## Connavar (Feb 4, 2008)

I already posted there.

Hope i helped with my recommendations.


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