Woken Furies is the latest installment in Richard K. Morgan's "Takeshi Kovacs" series of novels.

For those of you unfamiliar with the series, the pertinent points are that it's a first person space opera cyberpunk noir set in a universe where people's consciousness is digitized onto a cortical stack, permitting them to be "needlecast" faster than light through space and also to take over new bodies ("sleeves") as necessary.  Kovacs is a former UN "Envoy" - basically special forces that are used to being the first in to a hostile situation and are forbidden from seeking political office or even having good credit after leaving the Corps, thanks to the mental training they've received.

Woken Furies finds Kovacs back on Harlan's World, his homeworld, a number of years after the events on Sanction IV (the book Broken Angels).  There's a crusade on to retake one of the continents back from roving smart AI combat mechs, the technology that was discovered on Sanction IV is leading new human technological developments, and Kovacs is busy slaughtering his way through a sect of extremely conservative priests.

In previous books we were introduced to Quellism, a sort of sociopolitical movement that had led to a revolution called the Unsettlement on Harlan's World and was led by a woman named Quellcrist Falconer.  The Unsettlement was what caused the continent that's currently being "deCom-ed" to be, well, contaminated.  While working with a crew doing deCom so that he can get a new sleeve, Kovacs discovers what appears to be the personality ghost of Falconer.

Meanwhile, he's being hunted by the triads, the priests, and a faction of the Harlan's World elite that have decanted a younger version of himself.

It's a typical Kovacs - or, really, Morgan - book, full of extremely explicit violence and sex.  It gets a lot more into the history and backstory of Kovacs and Harlan's World, and even manages to wrap up some plot threads leftover from the first book (such as the fate of his lover Sarah, a hanging thread that had annoyed me by the way it was seemingly completely ignored in Broken Angels).  And the inexorable march of technology makes the book feel like it's truly a sequel, and not just "another in the universe".

It's not quite the blast of fresh air that the first one was, but I think I liked it better than Broken Angels (and definitely better than Market Forces, which I think is by far his weakest book).

I'm a bit embarrassed.

When I went to start writing this, I realized that back when did my Runo Knows... on Broken Angels I had misidentified it as Fallen Angels.  I have no idea how that happened.

Unlike Broken Angels, Market Forces is not set in the Kovacs/sleeving universe of Richard K. Morgan.  Instead, it's set just over 40 years in the future, after the Domino Recessions have turned entire populations into lower class prisoners in their own cities.

Here, executives are told to show up with blood on their wheels or don't show up at all.  Contract disputes, labor disputes - all settled by road duels.  Unlike what you might expect (especially for you Car Wars, Auto Assault, and what have you fans) there's no gun play allowed.

Chris Faulkner fought his way up and out of the zones to get a job with Shorn Conflict Investment.  Shorn CI - along with other companies that have CI - basically pick a side in a war and fund it to win, getting back a percentage of the country's future GDP.  Faulkner finds that Shorn is a much more ruthless corporation than his previous one, and the pressures of his job as he deals with back-stabbing coworkers, an intense and violent new friend, an ex-porn star turned reporter who is interested in him, and the simple need to get the deal done make him more and more unpleasant.

The question may become, as he and his wife Carla Nyquist, daughter of social commentators including a father who lives, by choice, in the zones, find themselves more and more estranged, is whether or not the disintegration of their marriage was inevitable or caused by outside forces - though that's not the focus of the book.  The book focuses on Chris' battles, especially as it regards to the North Andean Monitored Economy, or the country formerly known as Colombia.

Is Chris getting political?  Are his detractors correct in that he's not ruthless enough?  Will his problems with his wife, who is also the mechanic on his custom Saab, cause problems on the road?

It can be hard to like Chris.

It can also be hard to deal with the politics and economics of the book.  I don't feel qualified enough at this time, or more honestly perhaps, feel up to the challenge of arguing the economics and philosophy of the book.  I can find it hard to read - I thought so the first time I read it, found it even harder to read this time, but afterwards came out of it with a "you know, I think I overstate how bad it is".  It is a scathing indictment on ideas such as trickle down wealth and hostile free markets -- it's Confessions of an Economic Hit Man on a whole 'nother scale (which surprises me even more that Morgan has never listed that books as a reference).

Broken Angels is Richard K. Morgans' second novel, following the adventures of Takeshi Kovacs a few decades later.  Now he's a mercenary in "The Wedge" fighting a war on the planet Sanction IV.  Only brief flashes of his past - such as Ortega from the first book, and his buddy Jimmy De Soto from the Innenin fiasco - are shown.  This book focuses more on the military action on Sanction IV and the Martians, as Kovacs gets wrapped in a plan to discover a Martian spaceship.  It also goes much more into Quellism, the philosophy from Harlan's World mentioned throughout both works.  (Interestingly enough, the woman he was so in love with in Altered Carbon - Sarah something-or-other - isn't even mentioned at all in this book.)

This book deals more with corporate issues as well, espeically as they couple with military issues.  The graphic violence and sex are still there, as are the "obvious clues" to the reader that Kovacs and his famed Envoy intuition completely misses (though he does make excuses in both books).  (But seriously - the book is told in first person point of view.  If it merited him "mentioning" it, you'd think he'd notice it.)  The violence and action hero escapades go a bit more over the top, especially as the action comes to a climax.

The book is a fine second effort.  My biggest nit to pick with it is the writing of dialogue.  Somehow Morgan got it in his head to right more dialogue like this:

"Well, he's not a.  Bad looking.  Guy for a.  White boy and.  Wardani, well.  She'd probably.  Take whatever.  She can get."

It's obvious the effect he's going for (and, in case you were wondering, that was the prelude to a graphic sex scene).  As the book goes on, the characters are more and more radiation damaged and sick.  But they all start to.  Sound the.  Same.  As well as fail.  To use contractions.  Very often.

I get a bit tired about it.  I'm reminded of a writing guide I saw at one point that said "give the hint of an accent - don't layer it on constantly, or you'll just annoy the reader."  I wish more authors took that advice when being "stylistic".

I figured I should get through some of these...

Altered Carbon is Richard K. Morgan's first novel.  It's the story of Takeshi Kovacs, a former UN Envoy who has been DHF-ed via needlecast back to Earth from Harlan's World in order to help a Meth discover why he committed suicide, though the Organic Damage division of the local police have flat-out declared it a suicide and that it doesn't matter, since he was backed up.

"Huh?" you may ask.

Altered Carbon takes place more than a few hundred years in the future.  There are a couple of points about this future that are important:
1.  Human consciousness can be digitized and placed in a "stack", located at the top of the spinal column.  Your body is just a "sleeve".  This is done to everyone of a certain age (just after childbirth, apparently) and means if you die, and your stack survives, you can be "re-sleeved".  You can also be re-sleeved in a new body for other reasons - if you want a different one, for instance, for whatever reasons.  You can also be go into computerized "virtuality" for various reasons (including being tortured).
2.  The only form of faster-than-light interstellar travel is the "needlecast".  Since a consciousness can be digitized, it's sent as Digitized Human Freight via needlecast when travelling between worlds (sometimes).  The alternative is slow-boat, taking the years to cross space.  That's how new worlds are colonized; humanity has a "map" of the worlds discovered from an alien civilization on Mars.
3.  The Envoys are the ultimate special forces.  They're trained to needlecast into a hot spot, go into bodies they've never seen before, and be fighting (or negotiating) extremely quickly.

Kovacs is no longer an Envoy.  After a brutal firefight on Harlan's World, where he and his fellow criminal and lover Sarah have been captured by the authorities, he's hired by a "meth" - an extremely old, rich person - to discover why he, Laurens Bancroft, committed suicide with a blaster.  As he's very rich, he had back-ups, and was restored from back-up.

Kovacs' investigation is hindered by Bancroft's acrinomious relationship with the police's Organic Damage division, and as he looks further in, finds Bancroft was dealing with a lot more than that.

The book is described as kind of a cyberpunk noir.  It's very gritty, dirty, full of extremely graphic violence (including torture) and sex.  The writing flows well, keeping it exciting (helped in that regard by the first person point of view) and by having Kovacs in a "fish out of water" area (i.e. on Earth, where he's never been) helps lay out the background for the universe.  It's an engaging, fun novel - in my opinion, the best of the series so far.