This was book I truly did not want to end. Although author makes his heroes rather gung-ho and ready to devastate the opposition in standard me-cyborg-un-destructable manner (I mean you havea guy that has bloody artillery weapon on his body :)) this book also presents views on many things from treating vengeance and ones own life to how to approach the revolutionaries in time when nobody actually dies and every victory is temporary [until next load into the new body].

After events in book #2 Kovacs is back to his homeworld, Harlan's World. There he is hit by a very personal loss and this puts him on rampage in unique non-surgical Envoy approach to blood feud.

Accidentally he comes across the team of hi-tech mercenaries and tries to find refuge with them until situation normalizes. But [as is case with Takeshi in general] nothing winds down and he finds himself progressively in more and more problems until final showdown where his attempt to make peace with himself fails due to the over-zealous action of his team.

After age of carnage and destruction, after hundred of years serving as human cruise missile Kovacs is tired of everything especially when shades from his murky past arise again. Shades that he knows, knows the aftermath of their actions and is sickened by will of people to go the same path of blood and betrayal over and over again. He sees good people around him getting ready to follow ideals from the past back into social revolution against aristocratic Families, same revolution that made parts of Harlan's World wastelands patrolled by intelligent war machines.

But then maybe in that past might lie his true purpose in life.

Ending is little bit open-ended and I truly hope there will be more books in the series at some point in time.

Very good novel, lots of action and twists. Recommended to all of the fans of the Takeshi Kovacs and far future cyberpunk stories. ( )

Loved Altered Carbon, but this series ran out of puff I reckon. But maybe I needed a reread of the previous before I came to this after so much time. ( )

And so, after the fantastic, 'Altered Carbon', followed up by the enthralling, but not quite as good, 'Broken Angels', i had decided not to expect anything from this book other than a couple more incredible sex scenes like the first two books had.

And i was still left utterly disappointed.

The sex scenes in this book are like Richard just couldn't be bothered.   The incredible, imaginative stuff of the first two books had gone and in its place was just crude basic crap with the word 'cunt' used far too often like Richard was a 4 year old who just learned a naughty word and is trying to impress all his friends with it.   Really, that's what it was like.   It's like someone else wrote half of this book.

It's not like the great ideas and a good story that were in the first two books weren't there any more, they were, and that aspect of it was just as good and just as enthralling.   It's just the telling of it and the writing of it felt totally different.

I felt a bit of this in book two, compared to book one, and this third book continues the downward trajectory.

Did the editor get changed?   Because whoever edited this book needs sacking.   You really have to stop and pause while you work through conversations trying to decide if someone's thinking or speaking or whatever because the punctuation is completely missing.

Too many faults in a really good story.   What could have been an amazing book is left to be bearable to read once and i can't ever see myself reading this trilogy ever again. ( )

Reminds me a lot of a traditional first person shooter game. You're thrown in head long with no chance to take a breath for the first 100 pages or so, then the history slowly gets filled in around scene after scene of graphic violence (and in this case some graphic sex to boot)

That sums up both it's appeal and it's worst features to me. Sometimes it's just too much, too over the top. Take that graphic sex for example. It's not gratuitous - it only takes place in sensible spots between characters that make sense and it usually advances the story - but I'm not sure it needs to be quite so graphic to work. I'm not expecting porn in my sci-fi book. The violence is the same way - it's so over the top in places it feels like he's just trying to shock you.

The background world and history is fascinating, interesting and believable. Heck the characters have some depth and are interesting in there own rights, even though the authour has a habit of killing them off before you expect it. Even the politics gets interesting. I'm not sure how much of this is fleshed out in the earlier books of the series - this one (book #3) is the first I've read. It certainly stands up great on it's own.

If my first paragraph didn't totally turn you off, then definitely read this one, because there's lots here to really enjoy. Just don't expect too many quiet subtleties. ( )

loved the ending. ( )