Really rather good first novel, with plenty of crosses and double crossess to keep you going, including making and breaking deals with people that were killed days before.

Wonderful. A beautiful classic noir mystery set in a place where bodies are a commodity and life is cheap and possibly permanent.
Sex, death, betrayal and crime for the cyber set.
The strength of the noir pattern is a backbone for the sf tropes of transcendence and virtuality.
SF for those who thought they didn't like it. ( )

Hard-boiled cyberpunk noir. But am I alone in spotting a political message? At the beginning of Chapter 15, Morgan inserts a quotation from a political work from this novel's universe, which I shall paraphrase:

If a politician introduces a policy or authorises an action that affects you personally, if you complain they will say 'It's nothing personal'. Well, if it affects you personally, make your objections personal. It's personal to you; make it personal to them. Make it your business to hurt them as much as you can to make your point. That way, they'll take you seriously next time.

The level of violence suggested is probably unhelpful unless you've got more and bigger guns than The Man. But as a general principle, it seems to me the only way small people can fight back. I wasn't expecting to find a political principle in this novel; I was pleasantly surprised. ( )

A very good mystery, SF, action novel - 3.5 stars It's a very imaginative world with a lot of depth to it. He didn't just take our world & slap some SF on it, but extended it out logically & added some really interesting new tech on top of that.

The characters are well done, with men, women & all races treated equally, as they have to be. His hero is very interesting, as well. Not exactly amoral, but close. Takeshi is very easy to identify with as he makes his way through the complex world.

The plot was interesting, a who dunnit overall. It got quite complex & I wish I could have devoted more exclusive time to the book. For such a long, complex book, he did a great job of keeping the number of characters down, but there are some long pages between them in some cases & if you can't remember it all, you'll need to go back or the story gets lost.

About 2/3 of the way through, the novel dragged for me. I'm not really sure why it dragged so badly, but I was close to putting it down. I'm glad I pushed through as the end was worth it. Still, I pulled a 1/2 star for that. Otherwise, it was a 4 star book. ( )

July09: Did not *quite* live up to expectations, but that was mostly due to setting the bar too high.

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. ( )