What I'm Reading

When I read Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon,I was pretty deeply impressed. I'm a sucker for noir atmosphere, which he quite successfully grafted onto a good, original cyberpunk tale. I wasn't quite as impressed by the follow-ups, but I certainly enjoyed them.

Thirteen continues the hard-boiled tradition established by the earlier novels, but creates a entirely new world, much nearer to the present. It's tightly, cleverly plotted, something at which Morgan excels. One of the pitfalls of genre fiction is that characters are often larger than life. In this case the plotting depends on that being true of the main character, and that's not much of a sin; but, there are far too many beautiful female cops for this guy to get involved with, and most of the female antagonists are preternaturally endowed, as well. I miss some of the atmosphere from the earlier novels, this doesn't feel quite as original; but, bottom line, I like it quite a bit.