![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Woken Furies
Jul. 29th, 2009 09:20 pmBy Richard K. Morgan.
Woken Furies is the third book in Morgan's sci-fi series about Takeshi Kovacs. I haven't read the second installment, but the books stand perfectly well on their own.
The setting is a Blade Runner-esque mix of science fiction and noir detective genre. We have a somewhat dystopian future, complete with expensive space travel, terraformed planets, economic feudality and virtual spaces. Humans consciousness can be preserved in a little module inserted at birth (cortical stack), and assuming one has the funds it's possible to replace a dying or damaged body with a fresh one. Pretty standard fare overall.
Where Morgan is good is at the noir aspect. The protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, keeps pushing single-mindedly forward, despite getting bruised a lot. In addition to being a loner and a tragic figure, he's also rather full of rage in this installment. However, this is also the books shortcoming. The protagonist is really a pretty unpleasant person -- he has reasons for what he's doing, but it's easy to see that he's on a (self)destructive path of which nothing good will come. This makes the reading experience a bit less pleasant, overall, although it obviously is a matter of taste.
The other aspect Morgan handles well is the plot and to a lesser extent the world-building. There is a feel that the characters do live in a real, somewhat alien world beyond their control, but at the same token the people can surprise. Similarly, the plot has a fair bit of excellent twists, where earlier events get revealed, explained and put into completely new contexts before the final climax really stirs things up.
Overall, four out of five stars, with a negative due to the less than wholesome antihero.
Woken Furies is the third book in Morgan's sci-fi series about Takeshi Kovacs. I haven't read the second installment, but the books stand perfectly well on their own.
The setting is a Blade Runner-esque mix of science fiction and noir detective genre. We have a somewhat dystopian future, complete with expensive space travel, terraformed planets, economic feudality and virtual spaces. Humans consciousness can be preserved in a little module inserted at birth (cortical stack), and assuming one has the funds it's possible to replace a dying or damaged body with a fresh one. Pretty standard fare overall.
Where Morgan is good is at the noir aspect. The protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, keeps pushing single-mindedly forward, despite getting bruised a lot. In addition to being a loner and a tragic figure, he's also rather full of rage in this installment. However, this is also the books shortcoming. The protagonist is really a pretty unpleasant person -- he has reasons for what he's doing, but it's easy to see that he's on a (self)destructive path of which nothing good will come. This makes the reading experience a bit less pleasant, overall, although it obviously is a matter of taste.
The other aspect Morgan handles well is the plot and to a lesser extent the world-building. There is a feel that the characters do live in a real, somewhat alien world beyond their control, but at the same token the people can surprise. Similarly, the plot has a fair bit of excellent twists, where earlier events get revealed, explained and put into completely new contexts before the final climax really stirs things up.
Overall, four out of five stars, with a negative due to the less than wholesome antihero.
