Always interesting!

What made the experience of listening to Altered Carbon the most enjoyable?

Constantly introduced ideas about the future that are both believable and possible, I loved it!

What other book might you compare Altered Carbon to, and why?

Almost a steampunk version of l Ron Hubbard, with a touch of Brandon Sanderson!

What does Todd McLaren bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

An almost laconic laid back narration, that fits the almost reminiscence style of writing

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Death is no longer final

17 people found this helpful

Fantastically imagined future world

This is a great SF book. The premise of digitally preserved human consciousness is brilliantly imagined. The author creates a vivid future world full of detail, and the plot is excellent; it will leave you guessing until the last chapter. Anyone who likes hard Sci-Fi will love this. Initially I found the slow drawl of the narrator a little annoying but after a while I really liked it as his tone and delivery suited the story very well.

11 people found this helpful

As cyberpunk thrillers go, it ain't bad...

"If they ask how I died tell them: Still angry."

As the above quote may suggest Altered Carbon is an angry book. A very angry book. We follow Takeshi Kovacs (pronounced Kovach - he's very particular about that) as he attempts to solve the mystery of who killed Laurens Bancroft. The case is further complicated by the fact that Laurens is the prime suspect. And also that Laurens hired him.

At this point a little explaining is probably required. Altered Carbon is a novel with heavy 'cyberpunk' themes - it is set on Earth a few hundred years into the future. In this time technology has advanced greatly; humans can now be 'digitised', a process which allows the sum total of their personal experiences to be stored on a brain chip ('cortical stack'), which can be downloaded into new bodies (or 'sleeves') as and when this is required. Sadly, in spite of these great technological advances society itself has degraded to a mildly dystopic anarcho-capitalist state. Put simply, Richard Morgan's future Earth provides wondrous new opportunities, so long as you are capable of paying.

One of the issues I had with Altered Carbon was that the world building seemed a little inconsistent. Although great bounds had been made in some areas, this sense of progress couldn't be seen across the board. This is perhaps a little unfair, as the book was written in 2002, but reading it now (in 2015) some of the technology in it actually feels a little dated. It seemed at times that the author had put so much effort into focusing on one particular set of technologies, that he had failed to fully consider what general advances would also have been.

This applied not only to the technology on show, but also to certain aspects of human life. One notable example is that a great deal was made in the book about Takeshi's smoking habit! Whilst this in itself is not a make or break feature of the book, it does represent a (very minor) example of the imbalance of the vision presented in the story. When compared with the obvious effort that went into considering impact that digitisation could have on human life, it was disappointing that other areas were neglected. At times it felt like the story was guilty of not dreaming bigger in terms of the World it was trying to paint for you.

As for the story itself, it is a solid whodunit that rattles along at a consistently brisk pace. It is at its best during its more base moments. Sex and violence are abundant, and are described in all their visceral glory. To the authors credit this is generally portrayed honestly, and does not always shine a flattering light upon our hero. Kovacs is intent on doing his job and makes it clear that he doesn't care about anyone who gets in his way.

...Except sometimes he does. For our hero is a conflicted soul. Or perhaps just an inconsistent character. Either way, the book covers just about as much soul-searching as it does body-rending. It's up to the reader how much they take away from these moments - but personally I didn't feel that they represented the strongest parts of this book.

In short: Altered Carbon isn't a bad yarn, and although it hits some genuine highs it does struggle to maintain these levels throughout. A worthy listen, but probably only if you're an existing fan of cyberpunk or detective fiction.

(A brief note on the performance: Todd McLaren does a wonderful job of portraying Takeshi, and a solid job elsewhere. There are a number of odd pauses in the recording, which break the flow of the narrative. These often appear when one character interrupts another, and it would have been nice if these could have been tidied up a little in editing. This is only a small gripe, however.)

17 people found this helpful

It should come with content warnings.

I checked out of the book about a third of the way through, and that was after forcing myself to get that far. The reason I stopped listening was a graphic torture scene that I simply didn't want to deal with. The reason I found the book difficult overall is that it's peppered with casual objectification of women and sudden references to the narrator's penis and its activities. And yes, I know that the commodification of bodies is a central point in the story, and that people's genitals are relevant to their moods, but I found the whole thing painfully gendered, plot-irrelevant, and extremely jarring. Men's bodies do not receive the same attention as women's bodies, apart from during one rather exuberant sex scene where the narrator seems to solely focus on the one male body present - his own. And if anyone thinks that the objectification of women - not bodies in general, women's bodies in particular - is something new and exciting for sci-fi to explore, then they've really not been paying enough attention.
I found the narrator's voice irritating to start with, but he actually does an excellent job at portraying a deeply unlikeable character. The story is catchy, too, and I might have to google how it ends. It's just not overall something I want to spend my time with, as it just makes me feel worse about the relationship between men and women.

7 people found this helpful

Great story!

I love good sci-fi and this was good. Very good. I can see why amazon did a video production. This audio though was not so good - the reader was great - it was the recording itself, it jumps, has dead spots, lonnggg pauses. Really annoying but even so I recommend it.

7 people found this helpful

Great detective story set in sci-fi universe

I don't normally like sci-fi but I loved this. the tech is interesting and is integral to the plot, but the author doesn't skimp on the story. Cool mystery, great detective-style drama, lots of twists and turns, interesting exploration of the issues that might take place when the essence of a person - the dark behind the eyes - could be stored on a hard drive. If you like joss whedon's Dollhouse and detective stories you'll love this.

4 people found this helpful

Altered Carbon

If you could sum up Altered Carbon in three words, what would they be?

Action packed throughout

What did you like best about this story?

The overall concept is a fascinating one, - I won't offer any spoilers here, but has an interrsting take on inter-stellar travel and how to get around issues of time dilation

I bought the book when it first came out, following a good recommendation in SFX magazine, and its one heck of a read - on audio, its equally as entertaining

Which scene did you most enjoy?

Very difficult to focus in on one scene when the entire book is so packed full or action and activity. One scene which I found unpleasant featured torture (if you're squeamish about eyes, watch out in the final two chapters , but it fit very well into the storyline

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes

Any additional comments?

Well worth reading or listening to

14 people found this helpful

An excellent read

It was such a relief to come across this book after weeks of listening to boring books and even more boring performers. The narration is excellent. Each character is well and properly portrayed. Todd is awesome. I would recommend it to all scifi fans

3 people found this helpful

A Disappointing Read

>I’ve only managed to get half way through this book and had to give up. It’s really disappointing because the basic idea of the story is good, imaginative and different with a murder mystery element to it. But, oh dear, it’s so drawn out and tedious.

The book is just much too long, padded out with unnecessary scenes of violence or sex that do nothing to move the story on. None of the characters are very likable either and I found myself not really all that bothered how things would turn out.

So, this is a book that I’ll be returning, a bit of a let down as it looked as if it was going to be good from the summary and other readers reviews, but not one for me I’m afraid.

If you’re looking for a good book, my advice would be to try something else. There are plenty of better books available from Audible.

5 people found this helpful

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.

1 person found this helpful