Delightfully dark and thrillingly visceral

I gave this a try after the Netflix series left me cold after just a few episodes, and boy am I glad I did. From the action packed opening I was gripped. Morgan has the gritty eloquence to execute the noire mood perfectly and the world he has created is dark, visceral and rarely pretty. SciFi elements are blended with a hard-boiled private investigator and allusions of his spec ops military background.

The high concept of this novel is that in the future people exist as a recorded consciousness on a small device called a 'stack', and can be transferred from one body (referred to as a 'sleeve') to another easily, if not cheaply. This is explored in great detail and throws up some fascinating consequences, not least in society's perception of the value of human life and the distinction between a person and the flesh they happen to reside in.

I've seen that some reviewers objected to the very crass sexual content in this book, and certainly it is there. I would argue, however, that this is an extension of what I mentioned above: that this is a world where a human body is, for many people, a tool or a toy to be swapped, discarded and replaced as necessary. While the sexual content can be graphic at times, I didn't feel it was indulgent or excessive and certainly did not dominate the story.

Kovacs himself is neither likeable nor unlikeable, but rather he is just interesting. He is the perfect avatar to a world in which ideals and notions of a higher existence have largely been abandoned, and replaced with an almost nihilistic pragmatism.

My only minor complaint is that the very concept of a personality being able to transfer between bodies felt like a bit of an easy device to conceal clues and make it difficult to guess who is really who at any given time. For me, this detracted from the enjoyment of reading a mystery thriller in that I felt unfairly disadvantaged in having a chance of guessing what the answers would be. As a result, rather than having a sense at the end of "Oh wow, that was clever, I never saw that coming" it was more of a "Well, it was all so convoluted that I didn't even bother attempting to guess".

The narration was excellent, although there were some curiously long gaps between some sentences. At first I wondered if they might have been scene breaks, but then I noticed that many of them occured mid-conversation. I'm not sure if this was an audio issue or some pacing device that I didn't get the significance of, but it was jarring.

Despite that, I really enjoyed this book and I will very likely check out the next in the series.

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it's probably mostly okay

they made a load off f changes for the show... because it was better that way. the book is a blast, bit the show was s cleaner and neater.

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interesting, but a little long winded.

and quite confusing. the book jumps around ALOT without really explaining why, so it is easy to lose the thread. I had to listen on 0.9x and found myself having to restart a few chapters.

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If yo like Cyberpunk.

Futuristic Violent Crime Drama, with Erotic undertones.
Looking forward to reading the next book in the series. I actually couldnt put it down.

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the best book this year!

this is the best sci-fi book I've read since Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. 10 stars for sure.

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Awesome story, horrible production.

The book overall was very good. It starts a bit slow but very quickly picks up and doesn't slow down again. To be honest I didn't find the beginning very gripping but if you feel the same,I would suggest sticking with it a bit longer and it becomes really nice.

What I found really bad was the production. Pauses when there should be none, a constant background noise, but the absolute worst was that everything sounded a bit "blurred". So bad in fact that in a LOT of cases it was really difficult to make out what the very eloquent narrator was saying! This was so bad that it almost made me give up and return the book 2-3 times out of sheer frustration.

The narrator was actually very good, however, and made characters easy to distinguish.

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Excellent performance

Great story and engaging delivery. Different characters brought to life by the narrator. Thoroughly enjoyed

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Not really my cup of tea

Weird sex scenes and not a lot of science fiction, lost track a few times.

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Loved it

Great storytelling. Interesting characters and lots of twists and turns that I wasn't expecting. Really great!

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Excellent

Listened to this first a couple of years back and again just now. Highly entertaining both times.

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