I forgot to mention that I completed Richard Morgan's Broken Angels, another Takeshi Kovacs novel following the success of Altered Carbon.
Broken Angels is not as good a story as Altered Carbon. The most interesting bit about the story was regarding the Martians. Now for those of you playing along at home, Martians in this universe are a race of alien avians who lived on Mars but weren't native to Mars. The foundation for Earth's interstellar empire is built with the scavenged artifacts of these sophonts. Everything else about the book can be easily dismissed as macho, escapist military bullshit which attempts to portray Takeshi Kovacs as a latter day Miyamoto Mushashi who says fuck a lot. For those of you who are more middle low brow, think of that book/movie called Jarhead.
I really don't see how reviewers are drawing a parallel between Richard Morgan and Philip K Dick. Methinks the reviewers are only aware of the movies Bladerunner, Total Recall and Minority Report rather than the written stories. My recollection of those tales have them being less violent than their respective screen adaptations. Plus PKD's fiction was centered more on ideas rather than having those concepts being a framework to make some top-tier actor look good. At most, the authors share the same middle initial.
Going on a tangent, it's plainly obvious that Altered Carbon is going to be made into a feature film. Should there happen to be any sequels based on Broken Angels or Woken Furies, different actors can be enlisted to do the part considering the possibilities with Mr. Morgan's sleeving technology. Should they need to cast a negro for Broken Angels, I sincerely hope they do not use Samuel L Jackson. The guy's used way too much whether it's Star Wars or some Quentin Tarantino vehicle. I am certain that there are other black people working in Hollywood who aren't Gary Coleman, Samuel L Jackson or Bill Cosby.
Go ahead and read Broken Angels and see if I care since by the time I reached the epilogue, I didn't care. Even in the epilogue where Takeshi thinks "Even more occasionally, I turn my mind to what I have to do when we do get to Latimer, but the details seems unreal. The Quellists will want a report. They'll want to know why I couldn't twist Kemp closer to their designs for the whole Latimer sector, why I changed sides at the critcal moment, and worst of all why I left things no better aligned than they were when they needlecast me in. It's probably not what they had in mind when they hired me." Honestly this comes across as less of a plot point or revelation but a mechanic for a hook leading to yet another sequel. The revelation contributed nothing to the story I finished.
Doesn't change the fact that I'm curious about Woken Furies where Takeshi Kovacs returns to his homeworld of Harlan. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment.
Morgan focuses a lot on wacky futuristic inventions with the sole purpose of causing gratuitous bloodshed. Also Kovacs isn't given much more in the way of personality or fleshing out because fans of Altered Carbon are simply coming back for more vicarious fucking and killing.
At least I enjoyed Chasm City, Revelation Space, Redemption Ark and Altered Carbon.
