![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Dashiell Hammett + William Gibson in a noir cyberpunk thriller which is better than most.
Del Rey, 2002, 526 pages
( Yes, it's everything Requires Only That You Hate said it was, but it's still pretty entertaining. )
Verdict: For lovers of cyberpunk, Altered Carbon is a good read. Yes, it's testosteronic macho fantasy with a hard-boiled burned-out super-soldier ultimately solving the case by killing everyone in sight, but there are some intelligent bits of worldbuilding (Takeshi Kovacs frequently quotes from a revolutionary from his homeworld in a way that makes her sound entirely believable), and the cyberpunk technology introduced enough moral dilemmas and thought experiments to make this not a completely mindless action thriller. It is what it is, but I found it quite a lot better than most cyberpunk I've read lately.
My complete list of book reviews.
Del Rey, 2002, 526 pages
In the 25th century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person's consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or "sleeve") making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.
Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched 180 light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats "existence" as something that can be bought and sold. For Kovacs, the shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning.
( Yes, it's everything Requires Only That You Hate said it was, but it's still pretty entertaining. )
Verdict: For lovers of cyberpunk, Altered Carbon is a good read. Yes, it's testosteronic macho fantasy with a hard-boiled burned-out super-soldier ultimately solving the case by killing everyone in sight, but there are some intelligent bits of worldbuilding (Takeshi Kovacs frequently quotes from a revolutionary from his homeworld in a way that makes her sound entirely believable), and the cyberpunk technology introduced enough moral dilemmas and thought experiments to make this not a completely mindless action thriller. It is what it is, but I found it quite a lot better than most cyberpunk I've read lately.
My complete list of book reviews.
