New technologies are condensed out of thin air to arbitrarily move the plot along. The protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, is an Envoy, a sort of highly-trained, elite interstellar soldier, and one of the most blitheringly stupid morons I’ve had the displeasure of reading about. To call the characters one-dimensional would be an insult to the number line. Every single aspect of this book conspired together to instill in me a strange mixture of despair, anger, and boredom. My main problem with this book can be summed up as everything. So when I heard about Altered Carbon, I didn’t hesitate to pick it up. What I'm trying to say is that yes, I have a certain amount of nerd cred, and come from a background well-suited to an appreciation of cyberpunk. We are all science or engineering majors, and therefore we spent our socially-awkward, bespectacled childhoods sitting in the back of French class, surreptitiously reading The Lord of the Rings under our desks while Monsieur Charpentier tried to teach us the subjunctive mood. We all love Snow Crash and Neuromancer and Babylon 5, and we all hate football and direct sunlight. It came to me highly recommended by a number of friends, good friends, caring, kind, and well-read friends who share with me a love of speculative fiction. I hate the characters, I hate the plot, I hate the cover, I hate the way it smells, and I hate the way it knocked over a lamp when I frisbeed it across the room in a fit of literary angst. You don't care for gratuitous sex and violence Lovers of complex, twisty, out-there plots People who must read the book before watching the series He compares getting your nose broken to biting into a stalk of celery. Definitely not at the top of my audiobook suggestions. The other half of the time I wondered if he cared all that much. Audiobook - this part is not really a complaint about the book, so I tried my hardest not to include it in my overall impression, but it is hard to separate. Not that I mind a little gore or some steamy hanky panky, but it was kind of extreme in this book and I am not sure it was truly needed for the plot. The sex and violence in this book are very heavy on the naked side. Naked being gratuitous and mainly for shock value and nude actually advancing the plot and increasing the artistic value. I was a theater major in college and had to take a class on naked vs nude in art. Maybe this is appropriate for a book where people keep switching bodies. Then, as before I would start to think I knew what was happening and the shift would happen again. Often I was not sure where they were or what they were doing. Every time I thought I knew what happened, there would be some weird shift seemingly out of left field and I was lost again. For me, it was just a very confusing novel. Some may say that this is an intelligent novel that makes you think. expanded upon by the author are pretty freaking cool. The futuristic possibilities, technologies, devices, politics, etc. To expand on the last bullet point, there were scenes throughout the book that were very fascinating. While it does have some shades of other dark/gritty sci-fi I have read or seen, the concepts were fresh and intriguing. After reading, I may not be rushing into watching it. My wife and I are reading it at the same time with plans to follow it up with the Netflix show. I had been hoping to like it much more than I did. It's the best way for me to gather my thoughts. I'll definitely be reading the rest of this series.Ĭonfusing books lead to bullet point reviews. I could see this being even better on the second read. The novel has a fairly complicated plot that comes together almost flawlessly in the end. You’ll know what I’m talking about when you get to it. This book also contains the most unintentionally hilarious sex scene I’ve ever read. Personally, I think the book would've been better without its inclusion. There's also a chapter near the end that feels almost entirely superfluous. The pacing feels a little slow around the 80% mark, but that could just be a symptom of how fast paced it is everywhere else. I’m hoping that backstory is explored later in the series, because it’s seriously intriguing. This is a cold, difficult reality in which Kovacs exists, and it feels lived-in, with a lot of backstory beneath the surface. I particularly loved the concept of “sleeving” and the method by which characters undergo interstellar travel. It's pitch-black dark, brutally ultra-violent and fun as hell. If you’re a fan of the genre, you owe it to yourself to pick this one up. "I walked beside the woman I had killed last week and tried to hold up my end of a conversation about cats."Ī solid neo-noir cyberpunk detective story that plays out in a fascinating science fiction universe.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |