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EUROPE'S MOST VISITED SF/F WEB SITE |
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Broken Angels by Richard Morgan check out website: www.orionbooks.co.uk
Unlike that story, this isn’t a detective adventure. We see the aftermath of what Kovacs really does to earn his keep as a mercenary commander recovering from an attack in a civil war.
Arrival on the derelict Martian spaceship doesn’t go quite to plan but then, that’s the whole point of the story. Before anyone gets there first, I’m just as puzzled as you as to where the Martians came from. They didn’t particular sink in from the first book. Morgan qualifies that the Martians might not have hailed from Mars but only used the red planet as a stop off point in our Solar system. Their existence does go some way to explain mankind extending itself to the stars here. I still have some misgivings about the ‘sleeve’ process for extended living in different bodies. Unless your stack chip is destroyed, your personality or copy thereof can be implanted into a new body and appearance. Who you are is disclosed by yourself. There seems to be no other way to identify who you are unless you read the stack in virtual reality. Considering the nature of this reality, this does appear to be a major flaw that should have been explored by the second book. It allows too much leeway to deceive people as to your identity or that of others that hasn’t been either properly explained especially in the light of these two novels. There is little to fault in Morgan’s use of lead characters in providing them with depth. Saying that, the depth of detail with Kovacs brigade seems a little redundant when they are so under-used later. The problem of having so many interesting personalities is not using them sufficiently but turning them purely into cannonfodder, which they are really. Short of having their stacks destroyed, there is no sense of loss with any of the characters. Even when that happens, they’ve been under-played so there isn’t that much of a sense of caring for them. Richard Morgan is showing a lot of promise however and during his formative years, I think it’s worth you picking up his novels to watch his writing mature even further. GF Willmetts
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OTHER REVIEWS - April 2003
Other Book Reviews: April '03 Compass Reach by Mark W. Tiedmann Crossroads Of Twilight by Robert Jordan The Mammoth Book Of Best New SF #15 edited by Gardner Dozois Broken Angels by Richard Morgan How To Read Superhero Comics And Why by Geoff Klock Knight Rider Legacy by John Huth IV and Richie F. Levine Enchanted World: The Art Of Anne Sudworth. Text by John Grant The Birthday Of The World And Other Stories by Ursula LeGuin The Human Front by Ken MacLeod/A Writer’s Life by Eric Brown The Way Of The Rose by Valery Leith The Iron Chain by Steve Cockayne Orphans Of Earth by Sean Williams and Shane Dix The Poison Master by Liz Williams Angel: Impressions by Doranna Durgin Angel: Sanctuary by Jeff Mariotte The Gathering Storm by Kate Elliott Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card Other Video Reviews: April '03 The Tomorrow People 2:3: The Doomsday Men
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Takeshi
Kovacs is back in a new sleeve - that’s a new body to those who
never followed author Richard Morgan’s first novel, ‘Altered Carbon’,
in this reality. 
He’s
also had enough and wants a change when offered an opportunity to
do a bit of privateering to investigate a portal to a Martian artefact.
With a little corporate finance and help, he selects a team and
gives them bodies to invade and hold a radioactive area while an
archaeologist deciphers the portal access combination. 
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