Altered Carbon

By: Richard K. Morgan

Narrated by: Todd McLaren

Length: 17 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

In the 25th century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person's consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or "sleeve") making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.

Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched 180 light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), 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.

Altered Carbon is the first Takeshi Kovacs novel. Don't miss the sequels Broken Angels and Woken Furies.

©2003 Richard K. Morgan (P)2005 Tantor Media, Inc.

Critic reviews

"This far-future hard-boiled detective story is a lovely virtual-reality romp." (Booklist)
"Fast-paced, densely textured, impressive....Morgan's 25th-century Earth is convincing, while the questions he poses about how much Self is tied to body chemistry and how the rich believe themselves above the law are especially timely." (Publishers Weekly)

Helluva Sci-Fi novel!!

The world is "Blade Runner-esque" which I love, and it doesn't rip off anything from that or any other sci-fi works which I love even more. In other words Altered Carbon is a completely unique and original story and idea. Without spoiling anything I can tell you that in this world death is an old concept for the weathly and avoidable for anyone who can scrape or hustle up the funds to pay for a new "sleeve"(body) by transfering their consciousness via a "cortical stack" inserted into the vertebrae at the base of the neck. This tech also allows humans to travel vast lightyears across space to other planets by "needle-casting" their consciousness to the desired location. The protagonist is Takashi Kovacs(pronounced co-vatch) who is "spinned-up" from a decades long sleep where his "stack" was stored by a wealthy man called a "Meth"(short for Methuselah due to being centuries old) for the purpose of solving the mystery of who tried to kill him by shooting one of his "sleeves" in the head. Ofcourse the Meth had a data back-up of his consciousness and many clones of his sleeve on deck for when his current body is damaged or killed. Everyone would have known the Meth was backed up so shooting him in the head seems a pointless act if you wanted him truly dead, so who and WHY was he shot? The story that follows is excellent! As for the actual audio book itself the voices were ok for the most part but some of the villans and most of the females all sound like a bad Montgomery Burns(The Simpsons) imitation. Other than that it was good. Overall I loved this book and already have the second and third audio books in the trilogy waiting to listen to starting when Im done writing this reveiw! Since Im anxious to read(hear) the next one I made this review very short and basic, so if thats any indication of how good this novel is Id say if you're even reading this review with interest you will LOVE this book too! I highly recommend you either purchase it OR spend that cherished credit. Its well worth it!

Great story, but audible fails at execution

Great story, but audible fails at execution. The chapter in the book do not match with the audible chapters. Other than that an an excellent sci-fi/detective story.

TV version better than book

I was excited to listen to this book because i enjoyed the T.V. show based on it. However, I found the writing terrible and the characters much less interesting than in the show. Generally, books are better than their on screen versions. This broke that rule.

love the story but the audio book is poorly done.

the story is amazing but the quality if the recording is sub par at best.

every character dialouge change includes a brief pause. this drove me nuts.

edit: now that I've finished I can say that the audio quality picks up drastically after a few hours.

On the fence

The narrator was great and the story is interesting but there wasn't much that really grabbed me and brought me into the book. It was nowhere near a bad audio-book but there were too many times where I had to take a break and listen to something else. The descriptions and details throughout the book were on point though.

Excellent cyberpunk novel

An excellent sci-fi novel exploring some interesting ethical situations in a futuristic society. The setting is one of the best parts.

greater detail than Netflix show

Enjoyed the greater detail and the differences between the Netflix show. disappointed in low sound.

Good narrator, bad EQ

The narrator is great but has a very deep voice. The book really needs to be re-eq'd and the volume needs to be compressed.

It's good

It's good I don't know way I need 15 words to Wright a review but I'm some how doing it.... Done

Good, but long.

I decided to read this after watching the Netflix version. It's a pretty good match. But I prefer some of the choices made in the show to the book. The description is great at first but them it just dragged out an already long book.