Broken Angels (Gollancz S.F.)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
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 out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
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.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
32 of 33 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I hate to admit to being shallow but I did only by Richard Morgan's first book because of the shinny cover and here the old cliché turns out to be completely wrong.
I loved Altered Carbon and when I found out that a sequel was on the shelves I ran to the computer and got it. Like the last book this one gets you right from the off and refuses to let go. Set in a future where body swapping is an every day occurrence and you can only truly die if your cortical backup (called a stack, located just under the skull) is destroyed.
Takeshi Kovacs thirty years older since we last saw him, has a new body an is working as a mercenary in a political war on sanction IV. Wounded and in hospital he is offered the chance to get away from the fighting and go on a archaeological dig in the fallout radius of nuclear explosion and for personal reasons he accepts.
From here Morgan goes in to great detail about the lost civilisation found on Mars and how humans spread out in to the universe (something that was glossed over in the first book). It is a different style than Altered Carbon but still written in the first person, less a detective noir and more a political/corporate/military thriller it is never the less intriguing to read about how human civilisation has changed very little in 500 years.
The technology is described extremely proficiently and at no point does anything seem implausible and besides the book is more about the characters than the gadgets. The interactions between the various characters are expertly written (Morgan has a great ear for dialogue), its unsettlingly fascinating to read about them all slowly dying of terminal radiation exposure as they unearth secrets of an alien technology.
The only let down is towards the end of the book the story seems to descend in to extreme violence for little reason but this is salvaged by the excellent final chapter which puts a twist on all of Kovacs’ motivations.
With chapter as gripping as the last, Morgan doesn’t let you stop for breath and its true to say that is I didn’t have to go to work I would have sat there and read the whole thing from cover to cover in one go. I can't wait for a third instalment I need to know what will happen to Takeshi and you will too.
22 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The sequel to Altered Carbon is actually a better book in my opinion, but that may have something to do with the genre. Okay, so it's based on the same central character, Takeshi Kovacs, and it's set in the same universe [as such] but, unlike the first novel, which is a detective story set in space, this is just out and out sci-fi, and all the better for it. The usual tenets apply here, very well written, with a good tight style, complex enough to be challenging and strong characterisation, with a nice and dark overtone that suits my preference. This novel concentrates mostly on the artefacts left behind by the Martian civilisation alluded to in Altered Carbon and explores man's place in the universe in relation to the other races that went before. The effect is eerie and mysterious, but Richard Morgan hasn't neglected the shocking capacity for violence that made his central character so appealing and repulsive at once in the previous book. Once again, very highly recommended, but read Altered Carbon first.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Altered Carbon was an exceptional debut novel, and Broken Angels, which is a stand alone sequel, shows no reduction in quality.
Once again Takeshi Kovacs is the central character. A former 'Envoy' and all round hardcase. This time he is a mercenary on Sanction IV, and the story line is the classic quest for buried treasure.
While Kovacs was on something of a lone crusade in the last book, this time he is part of a group of mercenaries - as another reviewer astutely put it, this is Aliens compared to Alien.
Comparisons to Altered Carbon are unavoidable, and if you have not yet read the earlier book then you should.
Broken Angels does inevitably lack the wow element of its predecessor - set in the same universe and with the same central character, the only real novelty is the martian artifacts that are the subject of the quest.
The rest of the comparison is straight forward - Morgan has written another cracking page-turner, and its a fairly safe bet that if you liked the first book, you will like this one.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Sheer Brillance
I'm going to keep this review sweet and simple and to-the-point. Richard Morgan, in my eyes, has created an epic visionary blockbuster of a trilogy that should scale the heights of... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Master JD Moore
Okay, but could have been better...
Like many of the 2 star reviews, I enjoyed Altered Carbon. I was hoping for this second book to build on some of the themes of the first but it doesn't really. Read more
Published 3 months ago by DiscoDave181
Not as good as Altered Carbon but still good
With Altered Carbon, Richard Morgan became an author that I will surely read a lot. Altered Carbon made it directly to my top 10 list of science fiction novels. Read more
Published 5 months ago by TheMightyAlgernon
Brutal and rewarding sequel to Altered Carbon
As my science fiction odyssey continues, it was only a matter of time before I reacquainted myself with Kovacs, Richard Morgan's cynical, unflinching and displaced protagonist,... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Kate
Morgan rocks
Hard-hitting, visceral, brilliant; buy this is you want a good SF novel that abandons excessive nerdy scientific description for more earthy action and plot development.
Published 9 months ago by Balor of the Evil Eye
Hardcore Sci Fi
Richard Morgan excels at hardcore, punchy science fiction and fantasy. There is never a breather for the main characters and especially Kovacs. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Melanie
great book
My first science fiction book was this authors Altered CarbonAltered Carbon (Gollancz S.F.), the prequel to this book, and I must say this is an excellent follow up. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Mr. Nj Williams
I have to agree with the more scathing reviews
I have scanned through the previous reviews of Broken Angels, and I have to side with the dissatisfied minority. Read more
Published on 2 May 2010 by Mr. J. C. Buckley
Imaginative, unexpectedly good!
I did not expect to enjoy this book after reading some other reviews.
However, I found this book quite compelling. Read more
However, I found this book quite compelling. Read more
Published on 11 Jan 2010 by K. Royle
Too Much
The title pretty much says it all. You can still see Morgan's influences showing strong, but instead of the noir charm of Altered Carbon we get a 'war is hell' novel that could... Read more
Published on 9 Jan 2010 by Bookseller
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