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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  Isamoor | Aug 19, 2009 |  A fascinating and dark look at immortality: Morgan has introduced a dark concept of immortality that flies in the face of what it means to have a soul. If your mind never dies, then are you in fact immortal? If so, what does it mean to change bodies? Wrap these fascinating philosophical questions in a great cyberpunk style mystery story, and you have a very fun read. Kovacs was dark, brooding, and at times sentimental, and it was this last aspect of Kovacs that lowered my rating from 5 to 4 stars. Artificial sentimentality was the only point for me where the story lost its authenticity. Robin cook explores a similar concept of immortality in his book "Abducted." Similarly, Tad Williams uses the concept of mind transfer for immortality in his "Otherland" series. However, I think Morgan has taken the idea much further and in a more interesting direction than either of these two authors. If you like cyberpunk, you will love this book and the series. iayork | Aug 9, 2009 | Hard-boiled "noir" detective story set in far future. Tight, fastmoving and surprising plot. Memorable characters (Kovacs, Ortega) go through the full spectrum of human emotions. Ultra-violent, sexy, disgusting and really, really good. I'd pick Kovacs' sardonic comments over Philip Marlowe's any day. (  ) betula.alba | Aug 9, 2009 | ZB7  mcolpitts | Aug 3, 2009 | Great sci-fi world. Richard K. Morgan has created a fascinating future, one in which we might never die. There's a coldness to it though, which made the book hard to get through towards the end. Did I care what happened to any of the characters? I wasn't sure. I think a better editor would have cut 100 pages and made it faster-paced. Would have helped with some of my confusion about what character was popping up. Is it someone new or have we seen them before? Morgan has an odd way with words--similes and metaphors that are so out there they are jarring. I don't know if it's intended or if it's bad writer muscle creeping in. For a true sci-fi fan, definitely read it. For someone looking for a good thriller/mystery...maybe not. (  ) fleagirl | Jul 30, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0345457692, Mass Market Paperback)In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person’s consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or “sleeve”) making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats “existence” as something that can be bought and sold. For Kovacs, the shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning. . . . From the Trade Paperback edition. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:01 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Characters: I liked the lead well enough, but he didn't have that extra touch. The AI was a minor character, but I still liked him a lot. The rest were take it or leave it.
Plot: Pretty good overall. Little jumpy in places, but it did wrap everything up.
Style: Very cyberpunky. I liked the world he described, but I didn't like all the gaps he left for the reader to fill in with their imagination. Hell, the 'Encorps' might have well have been gods the way it was descibed. (