Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan felt right in line with Lethem, but with more of a William Gibson flavor. The language didn’t thrum like Gibson’s, but the world-framing theme of ’sleeves’ (human bodies as replaceable wrappers for your ‘core,’ or brain in a digital form) read well, and even original when taken to its extremes. The mechanics of sleeving even drive the plot in several ways.
I’ll pick up Broken Angels and Woken Furies, two novels set in the same context, at some point. Probably my next airport bookstore trip, since that’s when I picked up Altered Carbon.
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1 Book: Broken Angels | clock — watching time, the only true currency // Feb 11, 2007 at 6:58 pm
[...] Where Altered Carbon felt more Philip K. Dick meets Raymond Chandler, Broken Angels feels more like the movie Alien meets a really violent Indiana Jones tale set thousands of years in the future. For Morgan, though, the menace is (mostly) human. I found myself making time to finish this book, which is always a good sign. [...]
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