Richard Morgan

Book review:  someone once told me that when I talked about a book, they went and read it, so I thought perhaps I should talk more about some of the people that I read and have read.

Richard Morgan has been the sole writer in seven books to date and the co-writer in two and one upcoming novel.  I have read the seven novels.  I started reading his trilogy, Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies.  The main character is the same and it is the distant future, humans have spread through the galaxy but there is no such thing as faster than light travel, there is faster than light communication, but it is in frequent.  The cool idea is that everyone has a super dense computer backup in their heads that is nearly indestructible. Cloning technology is cheap and resulting in a world where people work themselves to the bone to afford a new improved body when they die that they download their old memories into and start life fresh.  Life is cheap, as long as you have a good insurance plan.  Guns and bullets are cheap too and our hero kills with knowledge of this fact.  It is a murder mystery and it is violent, very, very, very violent.  The rest of the series is just as violent, but we learn more about the hero's life and the worlds that he plays but also, the writer's mind.

Market Forces was the first book that Richard Morgan wrote.  It is in the near future of fast cars and quick draw executives.  There is only one way to the top in the world where there are hundreds of people just as good as you are and they are gunning for your job, literally.  Puts the inner city gangs in supped up cars and on the the highways where they do battle just so they can the best pay grade.

Thirteen, it is just after the turn of the century, the first colonists have started coming back from the new world.  The new world is Mars and it is the turn of the next century. There are rumors that they are developing a new technology of backing up the memories in a hard back-up in the head but that is just a rumor.  Genetic modification and the creation of Super Men is illegal, but governments have done in the past to create covert warriors.  Our hero is one such warrior from the British project Thirteen.  The world of tomorrow is gritty and dark, a world that is going through lots of changes, not just the weather.  Global warming is a fact and the United States has dissolved along social and theological lines; the world is balanced on a razor and the exiled Super Humans have come back from Mars ready to seek revenge.

These five novels are great science fiction dystopias, humans have made it beyond our time here but have lost a lot of our humanity, or have they.  In each case the hero is fighting what he is told and trying to do better but the world is a tough place to live.

The next trilogy seems to be something different; a fantasy setting.  Swords and monsters, magic and technology, morality and theology, all together in one place.  Also a dystopia view of the world, taken from the eyes of three heroes. A half breed nubian orphan heiress to a race of techno-mages that have abandoned the world just a few years ago.  A nomadic chieftain, dragon slayer ex-mercenary in a foreign war.  And the chief protagonist, fallen war leader, mighty general and famed Hero of the lands.  But each is flawed in the eyes of their people, to the point they are reviled but respected if only for the formidable fear they generate.  In this incomplete trilogy, The Steel Remains, The Cold Commands and a future anticipated novel, with no name as yet, the heroes are sent to protect the world, by the very gods themselves, from an unknown terrifying dimensional travelers.

At first glance this series appears alien to his other works but if you look hard enough there may be a common thread.  These books are just as gruesome on description as Richard Morgan's other novels and the characters are very real.  When I read the first novel I was pleasantly enthralled with the heroes, to of whom are gay; a male role model who is a man's man and a man's man at the same time!  I cannot wait to read the next installment.  

Please note, if any of these novels were portrayed accurately in cinema, there would be a 18A rating due to graphic content, mostly extreme dripping gore.