Takeshi Kovacs is back in Broken Angels. This is the second installment (of three) in Richard K Morgan's series. I reviewed Altered Carbon a few weeks back, and while it has some of the same feel, I was a bit disappointed. Altered Carbon is part sci-fi, part murder mystery, part thriller. It was something new to me that surprised me in a lot of ways. To me Broken Angels is only an action novel that takes place in the future.
Key Takeaways
Memorable Quotes
Rating: 5/10
Broken Angels was disappointing to me, especially after Altered Carbon. It is still entertaining, but not near the top of my list as far as Sci-Fi goes. I'll read the third installment anyway, to see if it's any better.
Key Takeaways
- What are the chances we're alone in this universe?
- If we discover life from elsewhere, there will be an incredible rush and incentive to reverse engineer its technology.
- Space travel and orbital dynamics are hard [again].
- Virtual Reality could be a powerful tool for any number of reasons. The possibilities are exciting.
Memorable Quotes
- Face the facts. Then act on them. It’s the only mantra I know, the only doctrine I have to offer you, and it’s harder than you’d think, because I swear humans seem hardwired to do anything but. Face the facts. Don’t pray, don’t wish, don’t buy into centuries-old dogma and dead rhetoric. Don’t give in to your conditioning or your visions or your fucked-up sense of . . . whatever. Face the facts. Then act.
- The difference between virtuality and life is very simple. In a construct you know everything is being run by an all-powerful machine. Reality doesn't offer this assurance, so it's very easy to develop the mistaken impression that you're in control.
- In any agenda, political or otherwise, there is a cost to be borne. Always ask what it is, and who will be paying. If you don’t, then the agenda makers will pick up the perfume of your silence like swamp panthers on the scent of blood, and the next thing you know, the person expected to bear the cost will be you. And you may not have what it takes to pay.
- I thought that was what religion was. Simplification for the hard of thinking.
- Religion is religion, however you wrap it, and like Quell says, a preoccupation with the next world pretty clearly signals an inability to cope credibly with this one.
- You can’t talk to people like that. Soldiers, corporate execs, politicians. All you can do is kill them, and even that rarely makes things any better. They just leave their shit behind, and someone else to carry on.
- War is like any other bad relationship. Of course you want out, but at what price? And perhaps more importantly, once you get out, will you be any better off?
Rating: 5/10
Broken Angels was disappointing to me, especially after Altered Carbon. It is still entertaining, but not near the top of my list as far as Sci-Fi goes. I'll read the third installment anyway, to see if it's any better.
