Smooth book - the recording, not so much

Marvelous book - smooth blend of the sci-fi and detective elements which is really cool. Even 400 years out there's still femme fatale, a criminal underbelly hidden in the darkest corners of the city and a corrupt elite preying on the weak.

The performance was all right but the quality of the recording was lackluster. Sometimes you can hear background noise and the push of the record-button.

12 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Great audiobook, some distracting mistakes

I don't know whether it was misreading or some typos in the original source material, but the narrator says "yazuka" once, before saying the correct "yakuza" later in the book. Near the end he also says "casual link" where only "causal link" would make sense in the context. I found these mistakes distracting from an otherwise compelling story and voice performance.

18 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Fractionally good...

Great story. Great reading. Fractionally good writing... That IS about it, really, in a nutshell...

2 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Slow starting book with an action packed ending

If you are a patient listener, are good at remembering names, and like sci-fi this is a book for you!
Voicing might seem a little dull at times, but actually the choice of voicing gives the book it's own charm.
For me the 3/5 is a good solid score, that is entertaining above average, but still lacks a little in voice acting. The books biggest difficulty are the many characters you are introduces to, after hearing all the book, I got them correct placed, but it confused me a lot in the first 75% of the book.

1 personne a trouvé cela utile

Not what I expected

This book had been in my TBR pile for several years and the wait generated quite some expectation. I enjoyed the book but I have to say that I expected more. I want to mention that I didn’t watch the show, so this review is just about the audiobook and I won’t mention anything about the TV show.

Men have perfected the technique of storing human conscience in a very small chip of memory, or stack, how it’s called in the book. This allows rich people to skip from body to body and reach the closest thing to immortality. A body is a commodity, which means, that a cheap and effective way to imprison anyone is just removing the stack from the body and storing it for the required time, which also allows making a profit by renting the body itself, and even using other’s bodies.

Takeshi Kovacs is an envoy from another planet. A special agent turned rogue, he has been imprisoned for many years but his sentence was just paused to provide his services to a very rich man on Earth, and maybe gain a pardon if things go well.

What I expected to be a technothriller was in fact a noir cyberpunk tale. It was good, just not exactly what I expected. The book is clearly written for a male public by a male writer with a male main character, with plenty of boring and unplausible sex scenes, and a female nemesis that is tempting and dangerous in equal measure. All this made the story a bit difficult to digest at times and it made it feel a bit outdated.

The world-building was great and I liked the idea of cheap synthetic bodies for the ones that couldn’t recover their own. I could have done with a synthetic myself to avoid allergies and other health ailments, but I digress. At least, if the book made me think about some of the core concepts, it means the world-building was well done.

The story was interesting and complex, and the more I knew about the story, the more intrigued I was. The character development was not as good though, and this might partially be why I liked the book but I didn’t love it. It was difficult to connect to the characters and feel some empathy towards them. I didn’t care much about Kovacs, probably due to how he was written.

Todd McLaren’s narration style went well with the noir atmosphere but it didn’t exactly enhance the story, or at least, helped to hook the listener. I found his narration a bit dull with not so great sound quality. It was okay, but I would have preferred a more polished narration. The character’s voices sounded all quite similar, male and female, except’s Kovacs, who had a different voice.

Sound is pretty bad on this one.

Sound is really bad on this one. Especially voice acting part between characters.. Very muffled.

Overall a good cyberpunk story, very different from the tv show.

Sex scenes were too long and pornographic for my taste. I mean... Nearly 20 minutes at one point.

Wild ride

Watched the TV show prior to listening to the book. Book is probably better but show is great too. Excellent reading by Todd. Would definitely be recommending this to my friends.

Thank God for RK Morgan A CyberPunkFuturist.

I own all five of his books, in print, audio & video.
Thank God for Morgan, the sci-fi/CyberPunk futures he gives you in his works maybe a glimpse of what we have in store in the coming years.
Morgan is one of my favourite writers, he has taken the time to flesh out his characters and Takeshi Kovac is a creation like no other, a one time U.N. Envoy, Merc for hire, general Hard-Man and problem solver.
Morgan writes full fuelled boys own rip your fucking head off stories, in worlds created and as fully populated as you can witness out your own front door.
His works are dense, considered, controlled and as clear as mud but once you get hooked you just go with it
Be warned but he is addictive.

Best sci-fi in years !

I got the second book too and will probably need the third very soon !

Rambling about nothing.

Cringe inducing sex scenes. Overly flowery writing. Some chapters ramble about literally nothing. Steer clear.

1 personne a trouvé cela utile