Woken Furies
by Richard K. Morgan
Published by Del Ray
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Reviewed by Gary Shulze
Set again in the 25th century, where a thing like "live wire" is actually a living wire, the dead can come back to life, yet cigarettes are still an ugly habit, Woken Furies is the third installment in Richard Morgan's "sci-fi noir" Takeshi Kovaks series.
The basic premise of this series, that the dead can be returned to the living, is made possible by a process called "resleeving." A "cortical stack," implanted at birth, contains all memory, psyche, and whatnot required to transfer a person's consciousness into a new body, or "sleeve." This device makes for some fascinating plot lines.
I was a huge fan of the first in the series, Altered Carbon, which was an incredible P.I. mystery novel that just happened to take place in 25th century San Francisco. The premise was fun--Kovaks is hired by a recently murdered client who wants to know who murdered him. The second, Broken Angels dealt with Martian ghosts, and Woken Furies takes place primarily on Kovaks' home planet of Harlan's World. (cue up Tony Bennett) I miss San Francisco.
The blend of science with noir was just right. In the subsequent novels, I found the Science distracting. But then, I'm admittedly a mystery guy.
In Woken Furies we find out what Kovaks has been up to since we last saw him, and it ist pretty. Seems that he has some real anger and revenge issues. He's crossed the line from sympathetic anti-hero to "bad guy," and I found it disturbing. Let's just say that he's been collecting cortical stacks of his enemies, and he has a long list. What he plans to do with them is truly frightening.
As with all of these books, there is plenty of violence and sex, at times graphic, but always masterfully, if not tastefully, done. Morgan does a great job of creating a coherent and consistent mythos throughout the series. Even though I found a lot of the off-world politicking and architectural descriptions to be tedious, and the book to be overly long, the ending, where Kovaks confronts his younger self, was almost worth the wait.
Armchair Interviews says: You'll be excitedly awaiting the next Morgan outing.