Fifty years after the events of ALTERED CARBON, Takeshi Kovacs is serving as a mercenary in the Procterate-sponsored war to put down Joshuah Kemp's revolution on the planet Sanction IV. He is offered the chance to join a covert team chasing a prize whose value is limitless -- and whose dangers are endless. Here is a novel that takes mankind to the brink. A breakneck-paced crime thriller, ALTERED CARBON took its readers deep into the universe Morgan had so compellingly realised without ever letting them escape the onward rush of the plot. BROKEN ANGELS melds SF, the war novel and the spy thriller to take the reader below the surface of this future and lay bare the treacheries, betrayals and follies that leave man so ill-prepared for the legacy he has been given: the stars. This is SF at its dizzying best: superb, yet subtle, world-building; strong yet sensitive characterisation; awesome yet believable technology, thilling yet profound writing. Richard Morgan is set to join the genre's world-wide elite.
Broken Angels (GOLLANCZ S.F.)
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From Amazon
Broken Angels is a standalone sequel, to Richard Morgan's debut novel Altered Carbon--a high-tech, ultra-violent, noir SF thriller which attracted much attention, including a movie deal.
Thirty years later, our super-soldier hero Takeshi Kovacs is wearing yet another body (swapping is easy in this future), already wounded in a messy war against revolutionary forces on the planet Sanction IV. Very soon he's lured from his duties into a hunt for a fantastic treasure discovered by archaeologists and carefully hushed up. The long-vanished Martians who once colonised the galaxy have left a buried hyperspace gateway leading to a working starship in distant orbit.
Kovacs uses frightening violence to get the attention of corporate sponsors even more ruthless than himself. His hastily assembled exploration team must work in a lethal fallout zone, racing to open the gate before they're stopped by radiation sickness, treacherous sabotage, or the threat of fast-evolving nanoweaponry. And there are repeated hints that if they ever make it through that gateway, worse things are waiting on the far side...
It's all desperately tense and crafted with appalling inventiveness. Life is cheap and death is no release, because the "cortical stack" implanted in everyone's spine constantly records the total personality, ready for "re-sleeving" in a new clone body or storage in virtual reality. So Kovacs goes recruiting at the macabre Soul Market, where thanks to the war there are literal skiploads of hacked-out sections of human spine containing stacks--for sale by the kilogram.
Other ingredients include sex, voodoo, torture, multiple betrayal, cool military technology, incomprehensible alien constructions, age-old cycles of catastrophe, and--above all--extreme violence. The screw is turned further and further, beyond what seems possible. Readers may find themselves forgetting to breathe. This is a rattling good yarn, for the strong of stomach. --David Langford --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Despite its slick formulaic structure, Morgan's SF–hardboiled hybrid, the sequel to the well-received Altered Carbon, bursts with energy and intelligence. Protagonist Takeshi Kovacs is the product of a brutal future in which corporations and politicians fight for supremacy. Humanity has spread to the stars by deciphering charts left behind by the long-extinct Martians. Since people haven't discovered how the Martians surpassed the speed of light, however, they usually travel through space by broadcasting their digitalized personalities from one planet to another and having them installed in new bodies, a technique that gives virtual immortality to the most unscrupulous individuals. One such is Kovacs, a young sociopath whom the interstellar government transformed into a super warrior before he went freelance. Kovacs resembles a smarter and deadlier Mike Hammer; part of the pleasure is watching him not only use his skills and conditioning but also struggle past his limitations to develop empathy for other humans. The few people Kovacs gets close to are the team that accompanies him on an expedition to claim the ultimate Martian relic—a functioning FTL starship. Morgan is good at presenting Kovacs's mastery of high-tech weapons and other gadgets, as well as his reactions to disturbing alien artifacts. The mystery aspect of the story is also well handled, always hovering in the background of the violent action as Kovacs gathers clues. It all adds up to a superior, satisfying cyberpunk noir adventure.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By A. J. Cull
Format:Paperback
Morgan's second novel featuring ex-Envoy Takeshi Kovacs is an excellent, thought-provoking story of future war and alien discovery. The stack & sleeve technology first described in Altered Carbon gives the phrase "War is hell" a bleak new meaning, as the dead can now be harvested and re-used until their minds snap. We humans have reached the stars but retained our stupid territoriality and aggression; in the cold Broken Angels universe, comradeship and compassion are rare and to be treasured. This novel is a compelling (if not comfortable) read, and is a fine follow-up to the author's debut novel Altered Carbon.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Morgan came out of nowhere in 2002 with _Altered Carbon_, the first novel about Takeshi Kovacs, overstressed, dangerously empathic diplomat/soldier trying to stay alive (more or less) four centuries into a future in which the mind lives in a bit of metal housed at the top of the spine and can be re-installed in any convenient "sleeve." This time out, a disgusted Kovacs is recruited by a deserter from the other side to set up an expedition to check out a major find left by the long-disappeared Martians -- who are the only reason humans are out in space to begin with. It's a quest tale, and a very good one, but the real pleasure, for me, is in the author's masterful portrayal and development of the characters. You don't necessarily have to like Kovacs, and you certainly wouldn't feel comfortable around him, but after two excellent novels, you would probably begin to understand him. There's some great quotable passages here, too, about the nature of war, and government, and loyalty, and the human situation in the universe. If _Broken Angels_ doesn't win the Hugo or the Nebula, or both, there is no justice. But, then, Kovacs knows that already.
By "jfizia"
Format:Paperback
Richard Morgan's Broken Angels is a neat (sometimes very messy) adventure story set against a sweeping backdrop of dirty politics, revolutionaries, corporate loyalties, and military action, and on this foundation it begins to construct a Martian mythology.
This is the same world we were introduced to in Altered Carbon, further fleshed out and featuring the same but freshly sleeved hero, Takeshi Kovacs. Whereas Altered Carbon was a detective story driven by individuals, Broken Angels is a kind of treasure hunt, where personalities are secondary to the vast corporate and other forces that direct them. The noir is gone, but the darkness remains in this more traditional and militaristic sci-fi story.
The characters, though secondary, are fully three-dimensional with consistent behaviour. When bodies are so easily replaced, identity by personality is very important, and Morgan is a master at this. Takeshi Kovacs remains complex, a product of his slum-ridden childhood, his special-ops training, and bio-engineering, including a wolf gene splice.
The language and the violence are still pretty hard-boiled.
But. The punctuation. Was driving me. Nuts. Periods are intended to mark the end of a full sentence or, at the very least, a complete thought. Here, they are used to mark. Both unnatural. And natural pauses. Dashes and ellipses are better suited to this purpose - showing... how we... slow down to... collect our thoughts, or when our - speech - is - externally - interrupted. Fire that copyeditor.
The broken angels of the title are the vanished Martian civilization. I hope the archeologists of Richard Morgan's world will continue to pick away at their remains and piece together their culture in the promised third Kovacs novel, Woken Furies.
[...]
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3.9 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Between two stools.
This sequel to Altered Carbon reads more agreeably, but is still too dependent upon the deployment of action and [love] scenes simply for the sake of it. Read more
Published on Nov 3 2003 by S Smyth
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good, but not as great as Altered Carbon
Altered Carbon is a great book that explored future technologies and existential issues. Richard Morgan's new book, Broken Angels is also good, but you should be aware that it's... Read more
Published on Sep 22 2003 by michael
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