Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Richard K. Morgan

07:52 / 24.02.05

So, last year i read Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon and was COMPLETELY blown away by his deft mix of Sci-fi, Noir, and Kick Ass action. I babble uncontrollably about it to everyone i know, so much so that my friends chip in and buy a copy of Altered Carbon and the equally awesome follow up Broken Angels for my B-day. I am waiting impatiently for the third book in the sequence Woken Furies.
As a fanboy of note i freely admit my critical faculties shutdown whenever i find sometthing i like, as now. I would like to know if anyone else out there has read the books, if they love/hate it and why. so indulge me while i quietly foam at the mouth.

P. S. Takeshi Kovacs RULEZ!!

09:17 / 24.02.05

Bought both Kovacs novels around Christmas and was done with both within a single week, reading BROKEN ANGELS in one or less one take.
Bought MARKET FORCES last week, told myself to not open the damn thing till i'd be finished with all my study-stuff...two days later, my professor's still waiting for my write-ups on "learning as evolutionary advantage", but boy, did i have two days of good reading...
Just ordered the comic series he wrote (Black widow:homecoming), hoping at least some of his energy has survived the Marvel-treatment. And yeah, holding my breath for WOKEN FURIES.

08:43 / 28.02.05

Havent read Market Forces, but going to soon. I read Altered Carbon in one sitting, started it afer i came home from work, at about 8 pm, ate supper and started reading. Finished it at 3 or 4am the next morning, and i had to get up and go to work that morning. I paced myself a little more with Broken Angels

Hey Maledictus, we cant be the only ones who've read these books, can we? Come on Barbelith speak up, if you did'nt like it, give us the whys and wherefores.

15:47 / 28.02.05

I've only read the first issue of his Black Widow.

Dunno, I was pondering Altered Carbon in the bookshop recently. He's a Glasgow boy, eh?

14:11 / 02.03.05

By the way, finished WOKEN FURIES, the third and i'd guess last Kovacs-novel...excellent once again, even though i'd hoped for a bit more of cat/mouse-playing between kovacs and himself...

05:41 / 03.03.05

DUDE! you have no idea how much i hate you right now

I dont htink Woken Furies is due out here in RSA for several months, and being perpetually broke means i am gonna have to wait awhile before i can afford it, books being expensive in these parts.
I am interested to see how that whole Kovacs vs Kovacs thing works out. A buddy of mine swears its the worst idea he's heard but i think it could be interesting. You say its a bit under developed though?
In rply to Duncan, yes i think he's from Glasgow, and i hope that the Black Widow mini is good. She's always been one of my Fave characters from the MU, and hope Mr. Morgan did her justice.

05:44 / 04.03.05

I finished Altered Carbon a month ago and loved it. I am currently halfway thru Broken Angels. To me Richard Morgan is a breath of fresh air. I generally read concept oriented Sci Fi like Stephen Baxter and Greg Egan, the character driven Takeshi Kovacs novels were really what i needed.

How is woken furies???

08:59 / 08.03.05

There's a certain freshness about Kovacs' nihilism I think. Morgan makes his point better in the Kovacs novels than in the rather preachy Market Forces. I sincerely hope that Woken Furies is on its way to my local bookdealers!
HOT

19:21 / 10.07.05

Hi !
Woken Furies is even better than Altered Carbon IMHO... go fetch it, go read it, go !
My god, that book is good.

11:04 / 20.10.05

I was about to start a thread on the kick-ass works of Richard Morgan, but then I realised there had to be at least one or two Barbeloids with a passing recognition of his works.

I brought Altered Carbon to read on the way back from Australia last year and had half-finished it before actually boarding the plane. Gob-smackingly good stuff. Not that the idea of downloaded minds is amazingly new, but the concept of the Envoys and Monsieur Kovacs in particular are fabulous. It's just a really good noir detective story with some quality violence.

Broken Angels was just as good, but in a different way. Takeshi on the battlefield is very different from him doing his gumshoe routine. I loved that sequence that talks about the recruits for the mission. That he only remembers their virtual faces, the real ones, not the sleeve faces they wore out to the site.

Market Forces is just as good as anything Kovacs-centric he's written, and makes me think he might want to give the Kovacs books a rest for a while. Somewhere between American Psycho and Road Warrior. It's the story of every sleezy corporate badguy you see in the films, but with them being cool as f**k.

I felt Woken Furies had slightly less energy than the other two Kovacs books. Some of it seemed a little same-old same-old to me. But still a good story.

04:58 / 21.10.05

Just finished woken furies. Loved it just as much as the first two. You mos def see Mr. Morgan's worldview a little clearer through this book. Oh yea and Takeshi Kovacs... Best Sci Fi character ever.

08:27 / 21.10.05

I'm afraid that prize goes to one Gully Foyle ("I kill you filthy!"). But Tak's a good runner-up.

12:47 / 22.10.05

Ooohh! Gully Foylwe vs Takeshi Kovacs. "Tiger! Tiger!" is probably my alltime fave book, right up there with "Dune", and i am hard pressed to choose. Curse R.S.A. bookshops and their Anti-SF policies. In a world where Dan Brown is the best selling author in R.S.A. , there can be no God.
Am working in a comic shop and reading the second Black Widow he's doing. He's Natasha is a lot more cynical and Bad-ass than anyone else's version i have read. And i cant wait for the DD guestshot that seems to be on the cards.

15:44 / 05.08.08

So I've just finished reading Morgan's latest offering "The Steel Remains" which sees Morgan changing genres slightly and heading into the realms of fantasy. This is apparently the first of a trilogy he'll be writing and I was quite impressed. Of course the ultraviolence and graphic sex scenes are still there, but Morgan takes a slight step away from his normal BadassAlphaHetMale protagonist and gives us, what appears to me, to be a fairly well written BadassAlphaGayMale character as one of the three protagonists.

I'm not a huge fan of fantasy, but picked it up on the strength of Morgan's past works. I have to say I was quite impressed, shades of China Melville as the various countries are still dealing with the exit of a high-tech transdimensional human species from their world/dimension and a recent war with beings referred to as Scaled Ones that apparently had access to dragons.

Not too shabby anyway and enough to get me hungry for the next one.

14:39 / 06.08.08

Ooh, that's out? Must check it out. Did anyone read "Black Man" (I think it was called "Thirteen" in the States)? I enjoyed it but I didn't think it was as good as his Kovac's series. But that might have been because I put it down about halfway through and got distracted by another book before I returned to it. Mind you I can't imagine doing that with "Altered Carbon" so maybe that was a symptom rather than a cause.

12:20 / 08.08.08

Hmm, i got Black Man for my B-dayand havent read it yet, i found myself distracted by romance issues,

Probably going to go finish it in the next month or so, and find Steel Remains.

I'm interested to see if protagonist in the Steel Remains will compare favourably with Takeshi, i really loved that character, Mary-Sue tendencies and all.

Hopefully Mr. Morgan will be able to equal his previous best work.

Btw, anyone read Market Forces?