- Title:
- Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1)
- By:
- Richard K. Morgan
- Pages:
- 526
- Rating:
- 4
It’s the twenty-fifth century, and advances in technology have redefined life itself. A person’s consciousness can now be stored in the brain and downloaded into a new body (or “sleeve”), making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen. Onetime U.N. Envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Resleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats existence as something that can be bought and sold. For Kovacs, the shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning.
A gritty, futuristic but pretty accessible work, this held my interest throughout and added an interesting, unhuman twist to the hard-boiled detective trope. Plenty more of Morgan’s work to read, this was a great starter.