Richard Morgan – Broken Angels
I was quite impressed with Morgan’s debut Altered Carbon – once I got around to reading it – and it didn’t take me long to pick up the follow-up, Broken Angels. And I must say that this second novel about the cynical anti-hero Takeshi Kovacs is about as good as the first. I tried to restrain myself, but I ended up finishing it in three nights anyway. Broken Angels is only loosely connected to Altered Carbon and could be read separately, but I don’t think anyone interested in the genre should miss out on the first.
In Broken Angels we find Kovacs employed in an elite mercenary force fighting in a bloody corporate out on a colony planet. While recovering after a failed strike he is approached by Jan Schneider, a pilot looking for someone to handle the tactical arrangements for an archaeological expedition. Kovacs decides to go along, and after busting the archaeologue Tanya Wardani out of prison camp and getting some corporate backing he assembles a colorful group of soldiers and sets out to explore what could be the most significant Martian artifact uncovered so far.
The Martian connection was mentioned briefly in Altered Carbon – and while you would think that Martians would be quite passé as a sci-fi subject in this century, Morgan still manages to create an interesting “vanished civilization”-scenario. I think it adds some balance to the novel, because no matter how fascinating the complex psyche and ultra-violent rampage of Kovacs might be, it would probably become rather dull quickly without that substance and purpose.
With a strong and complex protagonist, a very well conceived setting and a good yarn, it all adds up to an excellent, “unputdownable” sci-fi thriller. With the two great novels I’ve read so far, Morgan has earned himself a place in my “got to read everything ASAP”-list.
Altered Carbon is quite a ride, steaming through a landscape full of well-applied clichés and with enough innovation to make the trip interesting. One cyber-fiction cliché that is missing, though, is that of the young outsider who suddenly finds himself too deep in something – instead we have Takeshi Kovacs, a man who has, so to speak, spent most of his life diving head-first into shit creek. The environment he moves in is one littered with drugs, violence and prostitution – a world where money speaks and those who don’t have any are bent over for those who do. Classic cyberpunk corruption, in short.
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