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The Richard Morgan Thread II


Werthead

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Didn't realise we'd exhausted the previous one and been running on spoiler threads for [i]The Steel Remains[/i] ever since.

Anyway, to kick things off, [url="http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2008/12/woken-furies-by-richard-morgan.html"]my review [/url]of [i]Woken Furies[/i]:

[quote]Takeshi Kovacs, an ex-Envoy now working for his own agenda, has returned to his homeworld of Harlan's World on a personal mission of vengeance. During his task he falls in with a gang of freelance mercs assigned to cleaning out the continent of New Hokkaida, where intelligent robots left behind from an old war are still making the land too unsafe for re-colonisation. A chain of events is set in motion that will transform the face of Harlan's World and bring Kovacs face-to-face with his own past in a very literal way.

Woken Furies is the third and, to date, final book featuring Morgan's protagonist Takeshi Kovacs. This time Kovacs is out for blood on his own terms when he is swept up in a very different and fuzzy chain of events which focuses on his own past. If [url="http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2006/12/altered-carbon-by-richard-morgan.html"]Altered Carbon[/url] was a detective story and [url="http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2008/08/broken-angels-by-richard-morgan.html"]Broken Angels[/url] was a war story, Woken Furies is more of a political story and offers more of a glimpse into Kovacs' mindset, brought into sharp relief as he encounters old friends and enemies on his home planet. These events also allow Morgan to explore some more of the consequences of his body-swapping, re-sleeving universe, with subtle nods towards its implications for consciousness, sentience and what it precisely means to be human (a slight and barely perceptible nudge compared to Bakker's Neuropath, which yelled it into the reader's face loudly until we got it).

As usual, this is an ultra-violent, bloody, sexually explicit and generally pretty hardcore story of revenge, rebellion and fear, with some exploding robots, surfing and extreme rock-climbing thrown into the mix. Those who've followed Kovacs' adventures before will be at home here, although given that the events of the first two books do impact on the story here I would advise newcomers to start with Altered Carbon first.

Woken Furies (****½) is the last Kovacs novel for the time being, although Morgan has not entirely ruled out a return to him later on. The book is available from Gollancz in the [url="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Woken-Furies-Gollancz-Richard-Morgan/dp/0575081279/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229364752&sr=8-2"]UK[/url] and from Del Rey in the [url="http://www.amazon.com/Woken-Furies-Takeshi-Kovacs-Novel/dp/0345499778/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229366461&sr=8-2"]USA[/url]. Morgan's latest novel, [url="http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2008/04/steel-remains-by-richard-morgan.html"]The Steel Remains[/url], is out now in the UK and in February in the USA.[/quote]
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some day I'll have to go back and re-read all the Kovacs books, but after only a single read I have always thought that Woken Furies is my favorite. the rage & frustration (helplessness? futility?) that Kovacs radiates through this book really gets to me. I think a lot of people feel that kind of anger (with no way of venting it of course!) and its not something you often see in heroes in books. coupled with religious & political commentary, well.. a near perfect book for me.

[quote name='Werthead' post='1619954' date='Dec 15 2008, 14.54']Didn't realise we'd exhausted the previous one and been running on spoiler threads for [i]The Steel Remains[/i] ever since.[/quote]
yippee for a new Morgan thread! :smoking:
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Of course, Woken Furies would be the only Morgan novel I didn't order when I decided I wanted to have all of them, but could only afford all except one.

I read Altered Carbon at the beginning of the year and loved it, which surprised me. I was never much of a science fiction fan and I wasn't at all fond of first person perspectives, so I wasn't exactly expecting anything too great. I was hooked from the beginning and was just blown away by it. The novel did a few things for me, which I am much appreciative of.

1) It gave me a burgeoning interest in the hardboiled/noir genre, something that I had really only experienced (and enjoyed) in film.
2) I had few experiences with science fiction, the most notable of which (and the only one I really enjoyed) was Starship Troopers. While it is slow going, I am attempting to branch out and read more of the genre.
3) Along with Cook's Black Company, helped to finally end my silly problems with first person.

Unfortunately, I haven't read any of the other Kovacs novels, Market Forces, or Thirteen, but I am looking forward to doing so. Hopefully very, very soon.

Just finished reading The Steel Remains a few weeks ago though. Felt it was mediocre for the most part, but the end had more than enough potential to assure that I'll be ordering it from the UK just as soon as it is released.
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Just finished a re-read of Woken Furies, and have to jump on the "this is my favorite Kovacs" bandwagon, what i most enjoyed was the up close view of harlans world, and to see a more insecure, not in control kovacs....

I am a latecomer to Morgans work, just start reading them this year, but i have read all of the Kovacs books, Thirteen and Steel, this body of work has catapulted him into my top 5 favorite authors and i eagerly await more offerings.......
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To be fair,
SPOILER: All the Kovacs books
none of the Kovacs books have unambigiuously awful endings. They're all mixed with a note of hope.



Anyways, my favourite was Altered Carbon, although Woken Furies is the only one I've not yet reread - I've been doing a reread of them recently but all three in a row turned out to be a bit much so I'm taking a break.

My favourite book of his overall though is Black Man, by a distance. It's quite similar to Altered Carbon but more thematically mature, and I think more personally touching too. Just a fantastic book.
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I read The Steel Remains. It was pretty cool but nothing amazing. The next books should be good though. I liked the Emperor character a lot, I hope he features more.

He used 'fucking' way too much though. It's alright when Ringil and Egan and guys like that are swearing, but for a few of the characters it seemed completely out of character to just start cranking out the f-bomb mid-sentence.
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[i]Broken Angels[/i] is the best Kovacs novel imho. It's not like the other two, it's harder to get into than the others, it's not as fast of a read. But I think after re-reading it several times it's my favorite, easily. An awesome, utterly dark, bleak war novel with a heavy dose of [i]the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly [/i]. Kovacs is ....at his lowest in this book, he almost seems to be running on autopilot, no mercy, totally distant, unsympathetic, just trying to survive a hellish war that he really could give a shit about.
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  • 2 weeks later...
I just got [i]Woken Furies[/i] for Christmas, so I can finally get around to reading it. Woo-hoo!

Having read only three Morgan books ([i]Altered Carbon[/i], [i]Broken Angels[/i], and [i]Thirteen[/i]), I still think [i]Altered Carbon[/i] is my favorite.

In [i]Broken Angels[/i], I appreciated all the background information about the world and the Martians more than the actual story itself. My favorite thing about the book is that so much about the Martians remains unexplained and, well, alien to the humans.
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Spurred on by this thread, I'm re-reading the trilogy. They always seem fresh because they are so convuluted. Even I was confused about who killed Bancroft again.

And I have to say:

I wish Morgan was more of a hack writer, and was content to pound out only Kovacs novels every year, for the rest of his life.
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[quote name='Jacen' post='1634246' date='Dec 30 2008, 14.33'][i][b]Sometimes,[/b][/i] I wish Morgan was more of a hack writer, and was content to pound out only Kovacs novels every year, for the rest of his life.[/quote]

I came here to shake off the vileness that is Twilight and am happy to post my [b]qualified[/b] agreement with the above statement.
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  • 1 month later...
[quote name='Jacen' post='1634246' date='Dec 30 2008, 20.33']Even I was confused about who killed Bancroft again.[/quote]
Thank you for saying that. I just finished AC, and was majorly confused. Would anyone here dare to give a summary of the main plot?
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Broken Angels started to turn me from Kovacs as a character. His complete punishment of his former squad mates made me sick, and i started in on the final book only to put it down a quarter of the way in. I have not touched it since.

Black Man was awesome, as was Altered Carbon. I have Market Forces, which is an interesting read.

But i have resisted the Steel Remains. Why? Im sick of his bullshit, boring sex scenes. I don't need to see his protagonists screw two people every book in the most explicit fashion. Thats boring to me. Otherwise he's great, but he loses me there, which is a surprise, because i sure do like the pRon.

Anyways, i'll get back to it because i think Morgan has considerable talent and is surely my favorite SF writer aside from Herbert.
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[quote name='Happy Ent' post='1670822' date='Feb 2 2009, 03.01']I wrote a Richard Morgan entry for the perennial “If ASOIAF was written by some other authors” thread: [url="http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?s=&showtopic=1430&view=findpost&p=1670347"]Altered Catelyn[/url].[/quote]

:rofl:

[quote]Woman’s sleeve.

I pressed one nostril closed and snorted liquid out of the other.

“This the best you could do? Fuck. This.”[/quote]

Great stuff!
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Ent- You should have asked for a summary when I finished Altered Carbon (which is probably my 3rd re-read) a month ago. Details are foggy already, but I'll try.

SPOILER: Altered Carbon Basic Plot
Basically, Kovacs is called in by Bancroft to investigate his apparent suicide. Bancroft maintains he would never commit suicide and that it was a futile act anyways because his digital personality has remote storage. Kovacs iniatially believes him. Over the course of the book , Amendment 254 or something is continually referenced. This act would allow the government to access the stored stack personalities of Catholics. Normally, if a Catholic was murdered, the authorities would be unable to interview and take the testimony of the victims (via their stored personality on cortical stack). This made Catholics a convienient victim because there was no way to get their own testimony. The amendment would change that. Kovacs eventually discovers the secret location of [i]Head in the Clouds[/i], a high profile whore-house that prefers to deal in real life snuff encounters, as opposed to digitial simulations. He finds out that Reileen Kawahara is running the outfit. Kovacs used to work for her, she is basically the uncaring, heartless, evil bitch of the story. She is trying to smooth over the Bancroft incident. She needs Bancroft to vote against Amendment 254 (or whatever the number was) because her whore house uses and murders Catholic whores in their snuff porno. Bancroft, being the rich Meth that he is, has a major influence on the UN council. Kovacs iniatially sells Bancroft a made up version of events (at the behest of Kawahara). Basically Kovacs tells Bancroft that Bancroft went into a low budget virtual whorehouse and picked up a nasty old Military grade virus from the software (the same Rawling virus that Kovacs witnessed in use at Innenin). Bancroft was then forced to kill himself before the computer virus was transmitted to his backup copy. The story Kovacs cooks up is complete bullshit, but later he uses the virus to his own advantage against Kawahara, who like Bancroft has remote storage.

Eventually Kovacs discovered that Bancroft was involved in a violent sexual encounter on [i]Head in the Clouds[/i]. He raped and then murdered a young Catholic girl. He actually did commit suicide. He did it to punish himself for what he did, and to erase the memory of his actions, because his stored personality updated every 10 hours or so, if he killed himself before the update he would not remember it. There's about 50 other things going on in the plot, but thats the basics of the Bancroft puzzle. Any other questions?


Anyway,

Due to my recent TV dvd addiction I have been re-reading the trilogy of Kovacs very slowly, but I just recently finished Woken Furies.
I have to disagree with people- I think it is the weakest of the three books, with not much interesting going on at all- that is, until the last 50 pages, when Morgan finally decides to kick the plot in gear. Furthermore:


SPOILER: Woken Furies
Could there be a better set up for a sequel than the end of Woken Furies? Quellcrist fucking Falconer is back, dataheads can control Martian orbitals, Kovacs still has to find Sarah. etc/ etc. The entire book of WF was fairly low on action, and the plot was sluggish in comparison to the plot of AC. But like I said, bam, last 50 or so pages things start to get really interesting, only for the story to end, and apparently there will be no more sequels. Harlan's World Civil War Part 2 would make for a damn fine fourth book.
P.S. Yes, Kovacs offing his former squad mates in [i]Broken Angels[/i] was his worst moment ever. Though I guess you could give him the pass for doing whatever it takes for his own personal survival.
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[quote]Ent- You should have asked for a summary when I finished Altered Carbon (which is probably my 3rd re-read) a month ago. Details are foggy already, but I'll try.[/quote]

Wow, thanks a lot. I was okay up to the last few chapters of Altered Carbon, but it just got too confusing at the end. Broken Angels was less confusing, but one thing that kept confusing me is,
SPOILER: Broken Angels
who is the Semetaire person in his head? And in the epilogue, did he say he had been on Sanction 4 at the order of the Quellists, to make Kemp more in line with Quellist agenda? Is Semetaire a Quellist leader then?
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