DNF Audiobook Review – Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs Trilogy, Book 1) by Richard K. Morgan, Narrated by Todd McLauren (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Cyberpunk
Length: 17 hours and 10 minutes
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Release Date: April 22, 2005
ASIN: B0009I6MC8
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Takeshi Kovacs Trilogy
Source: Borrowed Audiobook from Library
Rating: ?/5 stars
“In the twenty-fifth 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 one hundred eighty 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.”
Series Info/Source: This is the first book in the Takeshi Kovacs series. I borrowed this as an audiobook from my library.
Thoughts: I used to love cyberpunk, I say used to because the last couple cyberpunk books I have read (this one and “The Electric Church” by Jeff Somers) have kind of been busts for me. This book is better than “The Electric Church” because the world and plot are more filled out but I still didn’t love it.
I got this for audiobook and realized today that my borrow time was up in a couple days…I only got 35% of the way through it because I just haven’t been making the time to listen to it. Then I realized I just don’t care and decided to return the book a couple days early. The characters and plot just feel very hollow to me and I wasn’t finding it all that interesting. The very raunchy sex scenes felt gratuitous and the explicit torture was a bit much for me as well. I don’t mind a lot of action and violence in my books but this just left me feeling nauseous and I decided it wasn’t worth continuing.
The premise is that Kovacs is an Ex-UN envoy who’s been sleeved into a new body to help a rich man figure out who killed him. Now being killed isn’t a huge deal because in this future human consciousness can be uploaded into any old body (sleeve) but this man wants to know who made him go through death.
The story has a pretty typical anti-hero vibe to it. Kovacs is not a good guy and you are not meant to like him; he’s trying to solve a case to save his own skin (literally). The whole book is written in that hard-boiled noir style but in a cyberpunk background. There’s a lot of term dropping and stylized language.
Unfortunately, my favorite part about this book was the somewhat sentient hotel that Kovacs stays in. I felt like Kovacs and the characters around him were pretty hollow and lacked a lot of depth. The plot is fairly simple as well; basic murder investigation. I do love the idea of a body being a “sleeve” that you can replace. I also understand that the mindless violence, torture, and sex that is so prevalent in this book is meant to symbolize how little people actually respect bodies in this world.
However, I don’t like reading about torture and (while I don’t mind a good sex scene) the sex scenes in here were very explicit, boring, and felt absolutely soulless and gratuitous. It was just a bit too much of a “ugh” factor for me and given how little I was enjoying the plot and the characters I decided to stop reading this. The concept is cool and the implications are intriguing; I was just not willing to slog through the cardboard characters and simple plot.
I did start watching the TV series as well a few years ago and kind of felt the same way about it (which is why I didn’t get more than a couple episodes into it). I hoped that the book would be better. Well, it really wasn’t…I think the TV series was actually a bit better.
My Summary (3/5): Overall this was disappointing to me. I love the concept and the implications and I really loved the sentient hotel. However, the characters, horrible torture and sex scenes, and the rather uninspired plot left a bad taste in my mouth. I quit this book at 35% in. I think in order to get my cyberpunk fix I will continue re-reading Neal Stephenson and William Gibson; all the other cyberpunk series I have been picking up have been seriously lacking. I am open for some recommendations for good cyberpunk reads if anyone has some.
