zach Posted June 30, 2007 Share Posted June 30, 2007 and that's a large part of why I felt BA didn't work: it focused too much on the martians and their legacy without ever taking away any of the fuzziness around them in the world-building. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmgrey Posted June 30, 2007 Share Posted June 30, 2007 It wouldn't really fit very well in the books if he did decide to have an in-depth portrayal of the background of the Martians. He does show some more information about the Martians as the series goes on, but the books are focused on Kovacs and Kovacs' speciality isn't archaeology. Absolutely. It's just that with a lot of other authors they wouldn't have put in the factoids about the mysterious alien races without ultimately using them in the main story somewhere. So it took a little bit to realize that Morgan was going to treat it differently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempra Posted July 1, 2007 Share Posted July 1, 2007 im about half way through Thirteen/Black Man. It's alright. Nothing great so far. I suppose the overwhelming anti-"jesusland" rhetoric is intentional to fit with the major theme of the book? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max the Mostly Mediocre Posted July 1, 2007 Share Posted July 1, 2007 Just finished Woken Furies. Very, very good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kat Posted November 21, 2007 Share Posted November 21, 2007 *thread necromances* I'm reading Morgan with no regard to order, apparently. I was looking for an audiobook and had read Altered Carbon last year sometime, and Thirteen over the summer (which is still my favorite book) but I couldn't remember what happened at the end of Altered Carbon enough to feel comfortable reading the sequels. So I picked up Market Forces after vaguely recalling Mandy saying she loved it. I liked Market Forces well enough. Certain aspects of the worldbuilding bothered me...primarily, the road-raging, which felt too satirical next to the rest of the novel. I didn't have a problem with the rest of it, as such, since Morgan goes a bit over the top with his near-future ideas as proven in Thirteen. But the car stuff just pushed the limits of credibility to the point at which I would roll my eyes every time it came up; maybe if Chris had gotten the history lesson from his boss earlier in the novel it would have been easier to swallow. Oh well. Ultimately I liked the book despite the anticlimactic ending, the characters were strong, but on audio it dragged in the middle. It seemed like every time I put it down, when I started listening again, it would be another scene of marital discord, and that got old after a while. Edited to say: While I had no problem at all with the politics and theme of Thirteen, the aforementioned idealistic dedication at the beginning of Market Forces doesn't really represent the rest of the book and in general the politics are less heavy-handed in Market Forces. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EHK for Darwin Posted November 21, 2007 Share Posted November 21, 2007 Heh...I was about to resurrect this thread myself. Guess Kat beat me to it. Just finished Altered Carbon and for the most part it lives up to the hype. Fast paced and extremely entertaining. Complete with interesting, occasionally in depth characters, bad asses galore, along with imaginative techs and concepts. Managed give a thorough enough examination of the social and moral implications of his 'core concepts' without resorting monologuing or grand speeches. Most of it was pretty well integrated into the on screen action. Ran into some problems, but most of my own making. Didn't read many of the earlier sections that closely, took a several day break some pages in, so by the time the mystery started coming together there were a number of characters I had confused or whose names I recognized, but their actual role I really didn't. Probably have to do a reread. Obviously one of the main themes in the book deals with the concept of life, what it is, and what inherent value, if any, it might have within the particular structures Morgan sets up. I thought it was fairly well explored with regard to humanity. But I found myself particularly interested in the application of these sorts of questions with regard to AI's. Obviously much of Morgan's world takes on the role of 'added flavor' with very little examination beyond offhand mentioning. AI got slightly better treatment than that, but not much more so. I was curious if Morgan goes anymore in depth with the AI's in later Kovacs novels? (Hendrix was pretty much one of my favorite characters) I'm a bit of a world-building whore and so when an author mentions something like the sentient, racial memory of whales or hundreds of light-years spanning deposits of Martian artifacts, I'm naturally quite curious about it. And I read on hoping for more answers that I generally know I won't get because they're not particularly relevant to the plot or characters. I guess that's fine to some extent, but I'd definitely like to delve into this shit a bit. Because while the characters and story were good, its not like detective noir is anything particularly new. And I generally like knowing whether an author actually put some thought into the world and the elements and offhand mentions he peppers within. Whether the shit had any serious and plausible implications on the world he's presenting to us or whether he simply shrugged and thought 'sentient whales are cool, I'll throw that in there'. I want to know if the world created would stand up to serious scrutiny...aka could the past events described plausibly lead to this present reality...is it at least internally consistent and well thought out...or just a hodge-podge of half thought out ideas tossed in without serious consideration and left deliberately vague just so that readers can't actually say 'well that certainly wouldn't cause this'? Do we get more in depth world exploration or does most of it still remain at the 'random tangent' level? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
williamjm Posted November 21, 2007 Share Posted November 21, 2007 I was curious if Morgan goes anymore in depth with the AI's in later Kovacs novels? (Hendrix was pretty much one of my favorite characters) I'm a bit of a world-building whore and so when an author mentions something like the sentient, racial memory of whales or hundreds of light-years spanning deposits of Martian artifacts, I'm naturally quite curious about it. And I read on hoping for more answers that I generally know I won't get because they're not particularly relevant to the plot or characters. I guess that's fine to some extent, but I'd definitely like to delve into this shit a bit. Do we get more in depth world exploration or does most of it still remain at the 'random tangent' level? I can't think of much mention of AIs in the other Kovacs books. I don't remember sentient whales at all either. The 'Martians' are more important, Broken Angels main plot focuses on an attempt to retrieve some ancient Martian artefacts. The amount of depth in the world-building varies, there are some things that are mentioned briefly once and never returned to, but some things like the Martians or the Quellist rebellion get explored in more detail in the later books. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted February 18, 2008 Share Posted February 18, 2008 The cover for The Steel Remains is up here. Not in keeping with the tone of the book. The book sounds quirky, gritty and violent, whilst the cover is very mysterious and ethereal-looking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nymeria87 Posted February 20, 2008 Share Posted February 20, 2008 I finally got around to picking up Thirteen yesterday and it sucked me right in. I'm only some sixty-odd pages into the book right now but it already got me hooked. I wanted to read Altered Carbon first, but my library didn't have it. I'll probably go by Barnes&Noble to pick it up soon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arthmail Posted February 20, 2008 Share Posted February 20, 2008 In my humble opinion, the reason i think that Richard Morgan does so well with his books is mainly because Science Fiction is a little stale. That is just my opinion, and this coming from a man who has admittidly only gotten into it within the last year aside from Frank Herberts classic. But i have read Iain M Banks, Alistair Reynolds, and i found them underwhelming. Oh sure, there were some cool parts, but the science took over the fiction and i mostly didn't care about much of what happened. With Morgan, i enjoyed Kovacs and the entire story. AC was great, BA was not as good but still better than both Banks and Reynolds. Black Man/Thirteen was awesome. It lost me in a few places, but overall it was very good. I did have a problem in Broken Angels, like someone else did - regarding his actions towards his former squad mates. It seemed WAY out of place, and some of the characters in the book...mainly the female expert on Martians, were annoying and unlikable. My only problem i guess is, that while i enjoy the gritty, hard bitten feel of the books, i'm not interested in soft/hard core erotica. There's a point in AC were there is a full on facial, and its accepted with glee. I enjoy my sex, but it seems out of place and gratuitous in the books. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThRiNiDiR Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 Altered Carbon - readable, with a few ingenious ideas and concepts Broken Furies - an absolute drag Woken Furies - the best of the bunch Black Man - haven't read Market Forces - haven't read (no intentions to either) The Steel Remains - anticipating it with mediocre interest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lupigis Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 Morgan announced today that The Steel Remains is finished and delivered to his publisher. UK publication is estimated to be in August 2008. Look - it's like this: if you really, really love Tolkein with a firmly burning uncritical passion, then there's a good chance The Steel Remains is going to upset you. If you really, really love all those stories about simple, good-hearted farm-boys becoming princes or wizards, then there's a good chance The Steel Remains is going to upset you as well. And if you like your heroes masculine, muscular and morally upright, well, then you could be in serious trouble as well. Oh, yeah, and if you really think that "things were better" at some unspecified pre-modern point in human history then you'd really be wasting your time with this one. If, on the other hand, you're up for a bit of moral ambiguity and a fistful of darkly dysfunctional characters, natural and supernatural, then this book is for you. If you think that an era in which people resolved their differences with bits of sharp steel was probably not a very nice time to be alive, then welcome to the retro-dystopic vision of The Steel Remains. Based on this quote and on Altered Carbon (the only Morgan book I have read), The Steel Remains just became one of my most anticipated books of 2008! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Calibandar Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 I really like the cover actually. Is The Steel Remains a standalone? He seems to make no mention of sequels. As for his description of the book, it reminds me of Abercrombie more than anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arthmail Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 If you like your main protagonist to not be morally bankrupt, unwilling to kill his former for the sake of some new ones, and to be completely sane instead of psychotic...this book is not for you. If you don't want your hero to be a killing machine, capable of taking down multiple opponents in no less than groups of twenty, this book is not for you. If you don't want to read a book where the sexual encounters of the main character are guaranteed to be full on eroticisim/porn, this book is not for you. That about sums it up. Sounds good to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stego Posted February 21, 2008 Author Share Posted February 21, 2008 *has an erection* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delete this account pls Posted February 22, 2008 Share Posted February 22, 2008 Looking forward to it as well. I finally got my hands on Aleterd Carbon at X-Mas and thought it was great. I really like the cover actually. Is The Steel Remains a standalone? He seems to make no mention of sequels. I thought it was a series called Land Fit for Heroes, with The Steel Remains being the first book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kat Posted February 22, 2008 Share Posted February 22, 2008 My only problem i guess is, that while i enjoy the gritty, hard bitten feel of the books, i'm not interested in soft/hard core erotica. There's a point in AC were there is a full on facial, and its accepted with glee. I enjoy my sex, but it seems out of place and gratuitous in the books. Ah, well, at least you've never unwittingly stuck an audiobook by some author who you've heard good things about, but never read, onto the car audio system while you're with a coworker for an all-day drive. Opposite-sex coworker says, "Sure, I like books on tape, and science fiction." Several hours later... Looking forward to Steel Remains though. Even if protagonist turns out to be a Kovacs clone, in chainmail, I'd probably be just as happy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Iceman of the North Posted February 22, 2008 Share Posted February 22, 2008 *has an erection* The Steel Remains... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voland Posted February 22, 2008 Share Posted February 22, 2008 Just finished up Woken Furies, so I'm really looking forward to The Steel Remains. Altered Carbon is my favorite followed by Black Man, Woken Furies and Broken Angels. All very good though, can't wait to see what he does with fantasy, although I wouldn't mind more Kovacs or a sequel to Black Man either Any Morgan is good morgan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doran Doran Posted February 22, 2008 Share Posted February 22, 2008 In my humble opinion, the reason i think that Richard Morgan does so well with his books is mainly because Science Fiction is a little stale. That is just my opinion, and this coming from a man who has admittidly only gotten into it within the last year aside from Frank Herberts classic. Science fiction is mostly dead. Apart from one, possibly two-three living writers, it's all fantasy in drag. Sometimes well executed fantasy, to be sure, better than the most anything being pushed in the official hot-chick-in-chainmail aisle. But fantasy nonetheless. My only problem i guess is, that while i enjoy the gritty, hard bitten feel of the books, i'm not interested in soft/hard core erotica. There's a point in AC were there is a full on facial, and its accepted with glee. I enjoy my sex, but it seems out of place and gratuitous in the books. Sex is notoriously hard to do well in writing, and it seems to become harder, not easier, as society in general gets ever more steeped in sexual imagery. Old classics, such as _Lady Chatterley's Lover_, would be acutely embarrassing if they were written today. In science fiction, it mostly gets resolved by having the future society - no matter it's other parameters - be a idealized verison of the California of the late 60s/early 70s, where everyone does everyone, although only girl-boy and girl-girl interaction can be shown on screen, since boy-boy would instantly gross out at least 2/3rds of the target demographic and so needs to be kept off stage. For erotica that's reasonable well-done, as well as actually science fictional, as opposed to just a Heinlein rehash, look at Walter Jon Williams _Aristoi_. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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