I’ve been remiss in writing my review of this, it’s been a couple weeks since I finished it, and I’m about three quarters of the way through my current read, Spin State by Chris Moriarty. As a result, this review might end up being a bit shorter than normal – not that I have any idea if I have a ‘normal’ review length. Anyhow…

Richard K. Morgans’ debut novel, Altered Carbon, is a semi-near future (a few hundred years) scifi novel which is really more a detective/mystery novel which happens to be in a scifi setting.

The mystery is a very good one. Intricate, layered and with a nice dose of conspiracy in it.

The science fiction is very good as well. In Carbon’s future, consciousness is storable and can be downloaded into other bodies – even synthetic ones. This ability ties into what is effectively cheap interstellar transportation (just download a person from another location and off he or she goes); quasi-immortality (back up your brain every day or two and keep a few clones handy); and a means of punishment (your consciousness goes into storage and others can use your body). This is so common that bodies are usually referred to simply as ‘sleeves’.

As you can imagine, the rich, powerful and unscrupulous can abuse this system to varying degrees – including, as you probably have guessed – double sleeving (have your conscousness in two sleeves at once), which is normally a crime, but you can get permission to do it.

The science is fairly light. Morgan doesn’t go into the nitty gritty of how this all works, so people that are turned off by very sciency scifi have nothing to fear here.

As you also may have guessed, a number of genetic and cybernetic enhancements are available to bodies. The clones of the ::Methusulah::s – the quasi-immortal rich and poweful, meths for short – are of course genetically tuned up.

The main character is Takeshi Kovacs, a former United Nations (it still seems to be fashionable to have the UN running the show in much scifi) Envoy. Envoys receive some very special training, and usually some nicely jazzed up sleeves.

Kovacs is on stack for criminal reasons and gets pulled to Earth by a meth by the name of Laurens Bancroft to help solve his ‘murder’ which the police have ruled a suicide. The sleeve he gets is not only not his race (caucasian while he is originally asian) but happens to be the body of the lover of the police lieutenant who was assigned to Bancroft’s case.

Now, you can probably see the problem with attempting to commit suicide when your brain is backed up and you have a rack of clones waiting for it to be downloaded into. So could Laurens. To the p0lice, because they have no suspects, no evidence of anyone having broken into the Bancroft estate, and a bit of prejudism against meths, and because being killed is merely an inconvenience for someone like Bancroft, have taken the easy way out with the suicide explanation.

Meanwhile Kovacs has an attempt made on his life while checking into his hotel; and he’s only been on Earth, where no one really knows he is yet, for a few hours.

The plot only thickens steadily from there. Loyalties and suspicions shift frequenty and unexpectedly at times and the pace is fast and rarely lets up.

The combination makes for a book that is difficult to put down. If I hadn’t been so busy at the time I would have read it in only a few days at most. I would definitely recommend this book. My only caveat would be that it is definitely told from a very male point of view, which might be a turn off for some and there are definitely a few ‘male fantasy’ moments in it. I found it to be a pretty minor distraction though, so if you’re interested in the book, don’t let that stop you from checking it out.

One remarkable thing about this book is that Rachel is enjoying it (and Spin State too; I checked both out of the library at the same time and we read one each and swapped), and she’s not a big scifi fan at all.

Next up, and probably in only a couple more days, Spin State. After that, Christopher Moore’s Stupidest Angel, which I just got from the library after having it on reserve for a couple months.