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)

Should have been a 5 star

Great storyline and character building. this should have had a 5 star except for about half way through I found that the recording sounded muffled as if the reader had the microphone to close to his face. I had to max out the volume and even then I had some trouble making out what the reader was saying.

Outstanding

this is one of my all time favorite stories. The premise behind the technology of altered carbon is amazing and intriguing. get this.

Better than the show

Where does Altered Carbon rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

it's above average

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

LA Confidential for it's noir style and rich suspects

Have you listened to any of Todd McLaren’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I haven't

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

No, but I looked forward to getting back to it.

Great story bad recording

Great story bad recording. You can hear the white noise in the background and every time there is a pause it stops. So it makes it more noticeable. Over all great story better than the Netflix adaptation.

Science Fiction with a Noir Blend

I enjoy many different science fiction genes; however, I did not enjoy this book as it was way to explicit for my taste in reading material. I guess I got caught up in the hype of this book based on the numerous good reviews and it was one which I received at a discounted price via Amazon’s Whispersync match.

I enjoyed the technology, story concepts, and science fiction aspects of this book. Be aware that this book is very dark and gritty with a large amount of noir style. Think of Bladerunner, The Matrix meets a detective noir movie. It is heavy in its use of vulgar language and has a few scenes of detailed adult sexual content including many areas that involve heavy adult subject matter. This book is not suitable for non-adult readers, and even if you are an adult and are not interested in this type of material, I would not read this book.

The author has created a believable science fiction world with many new technologies. The world contains all the same items as our existing world such as religion (a negative view), watchful government, police control, and many of the seeder aspects of a larger city. There are brothels, homeless, drug usage, etc. It does not seem like a happy place to live or grow up.

Todd McLaren did a decent job of narrating this quite long book. Much of the book is written from the first person perspective, so the narrator did not need to voice many of the other characters, but where there were multiple characters, the narrator did a good job of distinguishing them. Todd has narrated over 148 books on Audible (as of this review posting), all in various categories and genres and from this book I can see why he has been successful.

With regard to the Audiobook version, I will say that were some issues with the chapter sections of the book compared to the chapter markers in the audiobook. The audiobook says there are 15 total chapters, but the book itself has more than double this number of chapters. The majority of the book was very clear and clear. I found the book’s volume to be a bit low compared to other audiobooks I have listened to requiring me to turn the volume almost all the way up for normal levels. There were a few spots near the end of the story where there were a few sound artifacts such as a few clicks or swallows. Nothing that takes away from the book, but I now for some this is very important.

Good story!

Enjoyed the rich imagery and premise. Very good performance.. Good action but the author drags the story our a bit.

hardboiled graphic detective noir via cyberpunk

what's uncomfortable in this read is the recycling of older " women as victims and objects trophs." I get there is a film noir angle but it was hard to get through. The graphic and gratuitous sex scenes were a stumbling block for me. The word cunt is frequent and vulgar. for example, the book depicts a woman being raped with a red hot iron as a form of torture with her legs taped apart.


The rollicking no plans just instinct booze and a gun detective story is fun. A sentient hotel is a main character and the detective gets visions of his old dead war buddy, Jimmy. It is a strong detective narrative.

but the murdering of female prostitutes, male kills female snuff sex, etc., makes this a really hard read as a woman. men are perfectly rape-able, so the focus on female sexual abuse only was detrimental to the story.

one of the weirder moments was that the detective has evidence video of him porking his client's wife, and the police detective gets hot and bothered by this and then screws the detective. it is over the top and not exactly female readership friendly.

Fantastic Production

I had read Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon ages ago and it was a wonderful revisit to the series (also in time for the Netflix production). I'm a fan of his works and both of his trilogies.

Todd McLaren had a great performance and brought a lot to the audiobook. His female voices are definitely not the best, but it didn't impede the narrative.

I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants a good sci-fi crime noir that doesn't pull any punches when it comes to sex of violence.

Good Story, Bad Recording

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Good story and sound quality is good but you can hear the obvious stop and starts in the recording done by the narrator. I am used to a continuous feeling but here I can tell where he took breaks or something like that.

Devoured this story.

audio quality was poorer than I expected for audible but story was fantastic. I couldn't stop listening and flew through the story within a few days.