Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs Novels)
by Richard K. Morgan

List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $6.28
You Save: $8.67 (58%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Book Summary Information

Book Reviews of Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs Novels)

Book Review: Bad novel, bad noire, bad SF
Summary: 2 Stars

The first person narrator (Kovacs, the 'detective') is supposedly an informed citizen of his future, yet he often lapses into modes of thought which are more appropriate to much more primitive times. This lapse into anachronistic thought patterns happens either for the sake of expedience or to create bogus 'surprises' for both the reader and the narrator. There's a good example of the expedient variety where the protagonist goes off onto a pointless killing spree, knowing that he's under close surveillance by the police and one or two other parties without worrying about any sort of precautionary or evasive action. Maybe Kovacs is just being stupid because the guy doesn't even look over his shoulder, but it also shows that he isn't worrying about futuristic bugs, vastly improved video surveillance syetems etc. So I guess this exemplifies two shoddy practices, expedient anachronism and stupidity. Obviously, the author's aware of this fault as there's an attempt to paper over this problem, when it's later revealed that the police lost track of Kovacs, but of course he had no way of knowing that at the time he set off on his rampage. If devices of this sort are employed sparingly, I'm pretty forgiving, but if I see that the writer uses them knowingly and often, I think he's disrepecitng my intelligence and indulgence.

The problems with character and plot in 'Altered Carbon' are so closely entwined it's hard to treat them separately. However, the first big problem is that Kovacs is inconsistent, and ironically, another character in the novel obligingly points that out to us, though the inconsistency encompasses more than merely his personality. He's supposed to be some sort of renegade super-effectvie super-psychopath as the result of special training and conditioning. However, he seems more like an impotent, gratuitously violent, unpredictabley sentimental thug, maybe someone like Bobby Brown (Whitney's beau). Everybody in the story, including the viewpoint character, tells us the opposite though. In the context of all the violence and adulation, the reader expects Kovacs to be a smart tough guy, but looking at what he does, how he does it, and why he does it, there doesn't seem to much support for that belief. In order to talk about why the protagonist appears to be wonderfully ineffective and how most of the other characters fail to work for me, I'll need to look at the plot.

The plot moves largely by employing a hackneyed device from detective stories. Almost every bit of knowledge or effective action that comes Kovacs' way is either provided by, done by, or massively enabled by the various women that our hero encounters. Virtually everything he does on his own is either wrong or futile or stupid. Basically, the women he meets fall over themselves to help him out (to be fair at least one wants to kill him) it's like watching a TV episode of 'Mike Hammer' which equally relied on this cliche, but with tongue firmly in cheek, 'Altered Carbon', alas, has no sense of humor about it's absurdities or awkward bits. This dependence on others renders Kovacs very passive and ineffective as a character and makes it hard to beleive what we're told about him or that he qualifies as an amazing and scary guy. Anyway, in order to believe that all these women (and at least one computer) are willing to go to great lengths, take substantial risks, and go against their own best interests to help Kovacs out, I require either sufficient motivation or plotting that manages to keep me from worrying about what is motivating the characters. In this case, I worried a lot about motivation and generally found it wanting, though there's one striking and very cool counterexample.

I think I'll now close with another coupled defect, an example of noire failure and the eager embrace of a dangerous and very popular plot convention which has been ruining many Science Fiction novels for years. A classic noire story is a gestalt allegoy. It starts with the protagonist working on the basis of bad data, mistaken theories and flawed methods, he/she follows these and tests them against a radically different reality, which leads to an enlightenment and some sort of action and conclusion in harmony with the true state of affairs. The point of maximum cognitive dissonance generally occurs very close to the climax. In 'Altered Carbon' this point occurs about 1/3 of the way through the story, and at that point the first part of the novel has an abortive termination and then the novel gets started almost from scratch all over again. For me, the tempo never felt right thereafter. I've seen this structure work, but most of the authors I consider superior noire stylists don't even try. The practice of throwing away a big chunk of a novel and starting all over again is bafflingly common in Science Fiction, and the conventional noire plot easliy lends itself to it, but it's rarely pulled off in either genre or combinations thereof.

Summary of Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs Novels)

Literature & Fiction Books

• Subjects > Literature & Fiction
• Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Adventure
• High Tech