Disappointing. Nothing like the first book. The first book was Phillip Marlowe in the future being a hard-boiled cyber-punk. Altogether with the sexy wife of the punter who hires the private dick and the hard-assed cops who don't want interference in 'police business' and the whirlwind affair with Ortega.
The second book is a lot of nothing. Pale attempt to do some imaginary 'military science fiction' - never liked the genre, too made-up - some interesting aliens, but not much of them either, and of course, the Morgan signature, a whole lot of torture, dismemberment, murder, genocide, 'inhuman' shrieks under high-tech torture machines, madness, cynicism etc. But it doesn't work.
Kovacs is a pale shadow of himself from the previous book. At least in "Altered Carbon" he helped some people, did some good-guy stuff which made us like him. Nothing like that in this book. Just senseless murder and violence. Sure, that's the reality, but I'd like to read a book that kind of expands that and offers more.
The sex is also horrible in this book. In 'Altered Carbon' the sex scenes, as explicit and hard-core as they were, fit well with the narrative and the character's motivations. Here, it's just random fucking for not much reason. I didn't even get excited about the Wardani's reveal at the end. Nor did Carrera come anywhere near the pure-bad-guy image of Reileen Kawahara. Nor is Mathias Hand anywhere near the sophistication of Laurence Bancroft.
An utterly forgettable novel making you wonder why the hell you spent 12 hours listening to it (well, it eases the commute).
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