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    Broken Angels
    Broken Angels
    Broken Angels
    Audiobook16 hours

    Broken Angels

    Written by Richard K. Morgan

    Narrated by Todd McLaren

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Cynical, quick-on-the-trigger Takeshi Kovacs, the ex-U.N. envoy turned private eye, has changed careers, and bodies, once more...trading sleuthing for soldiering as a warrior-for-hire, and helping a far-flung planet's government put down a bloody revolution.

    But when it comes to taking sides, the only one Kovacs is ever really on is his own. So when a rogue pilot and a sleazy corporate fat cat offer him a lucrative role in a treacherous treasure hunt, he's only too happy to go AWOL with a band of resurrected soldiers of fortune. All that stands between them and the ancient alien spacecraft they mean to salvage are a massacred city bathed in deadly radiation, unleashed nanotechnolgy with a million ways to kill, and whatever surprises the highly advanced Martian race may have in store. But armed with his genetically engineered instincts, and his trusty twin Kalashnikovs, Takeshi is ready to take on anything-and let the devil take whoever's left behind.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateApr 15, 2005
    ISBN9781400171385
    Broken Angels

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    Reviews for Broken Angels

    4/5

    1,115 ratings41 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I like the first novel better because it was in the track of who done it
    • 3/5
      Takeshi Kovacs is a man for hire. He exists in virtual reality, like all minds without bodies, and is "re-sleeved" into a body when he has a job to do. And this time, his job is to get an archaeologist to an abandoned Martian spaceship. To get there, the team has to make their way through a war zone--a war in which Kovacs has already fought on both sides. The ship is flooded with radiation, drifting in the middle of space, and the architecture of the Martians is enough to literally drive humans mad.

      It's one hell of an adventure. Less enjoyable than the last, though, I think mostly because there's nothing fun about war. Especially when Morgan, master of emotional and physical trauma, writes it.
    • 3/5
      I barely remember this one, but I imagine my thoughts were the same: interesting, but why all the sex...?
    • 3/5
      Not really a coherent story. A lot of things happen and then the author loops around at the end to “explain.” But entertaining enough to keep me listening.
      And the gratuitous sex was silly.
    • 4/5
      It's not as good as Altered Carbon, but it's still a great read in the series. Highly recommend.
    • 3/5
      Author took a weird choice shifting from a cyberpunk detective novel to like a cyberpunk indiana jones. Made some elements feel a little more forced, however also let him world-build again this time looking at the future of war as opposed to the future of capitalism
    • 5/5
      A thouroughly enjoyable read; exciting, depressing, believable, full of plot twists and layers, visceral and gruesome without being torture porn. Looking forward to part three!
    • 3/5
      Don't think I ever got over the fact that this book isn't an SF/mystery/noir like the first book was, and instead takes its cues from military SF, and a cross between Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama, and Pohl's Heechee novels.

      That's not a bad thing and, as a hardcore SF novel, it's great. I guess I was just looking for another novel similar to Altered Carbon, so I wasn't really invested in the ride I just took.

      Don't get me wrong, it's a good novel, just not the novel I wanted at this time. The problem is me, not the novel.
    • 3/5
      Decades after the events of Altered Carbon, Takeshi Kovacs continues life as a killer for hire. Where he played the role of a detective in Altered Carbon, Kovacs is more of a soldier in this one. While events are mentioned in passing, Broken Angels can be read without Altered Carbon. For those who watched the Netflix show, this book is thankfully nothing like season 2.War rages on the world of Sanction IV between a corporate backed government and revolutionaries/terrorists, and Kovacs starts off having been almost killed in the fighting. Fellow soldier Schneider talks to him about an archaeological find that would make them wealthy enough to retire from soldiering. Broken Angels leaves behind the noir feel of its predecessor, replacing it with suspense, action, and Martians. A bit of horror gets in there too. For fans of the the mystery approach, a small one is on-going through the second half of the book, and completely changed my view of one character when Takeshi confronts the culprit at the end. Takeshi's cynicism stands out more this time around, likely as a result of the war going on around him. While the tone is darker overall, there is more levity in the banter between Kovacs and his companions. Still, I think the noir of Altered Carbon fit the character better.The worldbuilding is expanded here, and we learn that some of humanity's advancements come from a lost Martian people. Not a new concept in sci-fi, but putting it in the conflict between corporate fatcats who only see a way to advance their status vs. self-righteous revolutionaries who giggle at the thought of using the alien weapons to kill people was a nice touch.Overall, I think I preferred Altered Carbon, but Broken Angels was a decent read.
    • 4/5
      I like the world he's built for Kovacs, and how it's a essentially a spy thriller in space with ancient aliens. Cool book, and a pretty good sequel.
    • 5/5
      This review is also on Woken Furies (#2 and #3 in the Altered Carbon series)

      First I read Altered Carbon and was so touched by it that I then read the other two in the series: Broken Angels and Woken Furies.

      So during the day I am tooling around the Baltic: Russia, Finland, Sweden, then Germany. I am soaking up all this stuff from the past, most of it brilliant. By night, however, I am soaking up all this stuff from the future, all of it brilliant.

      The main protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, like all good mass murdering heroes, has some moral dilemmas about what he does for a living. The good thing about sci-fi is that it doesn’t get its head stuck up its arse Moral dilemmas are dealt with in a very pragmatic fashion that usually involves someone dying, sometimes the wrong person.

      This is not the thinking person’s sci-fi, it is more the feeling person’s sci-fi. I am assuming in writing this that you also like sci-fi and have the same snobbish pretensions that I do.

      One real stand out thing about this series is that it is racially blurring. Is Takeshi Kovacs black? or sometimes black? and sometimes Asian? or sometimes something else entirely? I ask that because it is not often in any book that the main protagonist is so very undefined that you cannot hang any racial stereotypes on his frame, benevolent or not. It remind me of something that I came across recently that said, “The body is only a garment, address the wearer not the cloak.” To all practical purposes it places the focus more directly on the character themselves and takes away any visualising you may (unconsciously) do to flesh them out. As a device I really liked it. Having said that, all the arseholes were quite clearly defined.

      I cannot think of another genre that has to ride so much stigma from so-called “book people” than sci-fi. I recently read The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, it is brilliant. I also read The Martian by Andy Weir it too, is brilliant.

      Both are fiction, but one requires reading things like The Guardian or The New York Times and the other takes imagination. No Bookers for guessing which is which.

      As an aside, a few years back I set myself the task of reading all the Booker winners. Man, apart from a few gems, most of them are like looking at your grandparents underwear.
    • 3/5
      Kovacs is working as a mercenary fighting rebels and being paid well he quickly goes AWOL at the possibility of getting the cut om finding a Martian spaceship. So much of current human tech and exploration is based on the few bits they have found that to find a ship would be amazing amounts of wealth. But with so much money on the line you have to wonder who can you trust as they figure out how to activate the gate to get to the ship as their sleeves slowly die from radiation poisoning. This isn’t a noir as the previous book but certainly more thriller style. An enjoyable read.
    • 4/5
      Broken Angels told us more of the martian tale and deepened the idea of how to use the "sleeves". The story line again is part crime part SciFi. This time there were more persons in the cast, some of which remained a bit shallow to the end. But a gateway towards the stars was flashed open if just for a second. I liked this one.
    • 5/5
      Novel about the chase of mysterious alien artefacts on a far away planet in a future where humanity evolved to master nano-technology and direct brain interfacing with computer system. The main character Takeshi Kovacs is a mercenary with a wide range of skills recruited to secure the alien artefact, together with a team he assembles. After a complex series of adventures they discover the artefact and manage to escape the war zone with part of his team. The action is very entertaining and the twists and unexpected turns of the actions are thrilling. The characters do not seem to develop a lot during the book, but rather are exposed slowly to be much more complex than what they appeared at beginning.
    • 4/5
      Different from the previous volume, in that Kovac doesn't need to investigate anything his skills are required purely as a soldier, although it's not clear what he's going to have to fight. I'm not entirely happy with the coincidence in timing about his enemies, but we'll only see in the final book how it all pans out.Kovacs was invited to join a top of the line military unit (in a top notch skin) to help repress a brutal insurgency on a remote world. After a brutal battle he's recuperating in hospital when he's approached by a stranger who claims to have found some secret alien technology that hasn't been released to the official Guild. Features two bouts of particularly gratuitous and graphic sex, only to counteract all the other violence that goes about - of course when your entire personality is stored in a protected chip you can be fairly casual with a skin because there's a good chance you'll be resurrected into another one whenever that's convenient. Try to avoid having the chip excised, dismantled, burnt, blown up, directly shot at, or otherwise destroyed though.TBC
    • 4/5
      A good and interesting Takeshi Novacs article. A soldier of fortune on a war torn planet Novac gets involved in finding and delivering a star gate left from an earlier space faring civilization. Provides more Martian back story. Was a little lost while his characters were in space but a good read.
    • 3/5
      Secondo romanzo di R.Morgan con l'anti-eroe Takeshi Kovacs come protagonista, in questa storia totalmente incentrata su di lui. Infatti la trama poco significativa serve solo per una panoramica hd sul personaggio in una escaltion dura e cruda e molto military. Per oltre due terzi il romanzo non è altro che la descrizione di come Kovacs organizza una spedizione archeologica clandestina per appropriarsi di preziosi reperti alieni su di un pianeta in piena guerra civile, tra scelta dei compagni ri-custoditi, problemi logistici, accordi con i "finanziatori" e l'evitare i problemi degli scontri con i combattenti. Solo nell'ultima parte il romanzo si fa più interessante con l'entrata in scena di una misteriosa gigantesca astronave aliena che forse può fare un po' di luce sulla scomparsa repentina ed inspiegata degli antichi "marziani".Capitolo di gran lunga inferiore al primo Bay City, con cui ben poco ha di che condividere, ha diverse pecche tra cui lo scarso interesse della trama, l'eccessiva durezza/sanguinarietà di alcuni passaggi, o l'inutile ed insulsa descrizione di rapporti sessuali, la ripetitività di alcune descrizioni delle capacità da Spedi di Kovacs, ecc... Resta comunque un romanzo godibile per la gran capacità dell'autore di creare e descrivere personaggi ed interazioni, sentimenti e stati d'animo, ma anche delle scene di combattimento. Lavoro al limite della sufficienza, a mio personale parere, consigliato solo a chi ama la parte dura e cruda del personaggio.
    • 4/5
      Welcome back to the world of Takeshi Kovacs. It is 30 years after the previous novel - and Takeshi had been through a lot in the meantime. Maybe one day we will hear about all of them but when we see him here and now, we find him in the middle of a war on Sanction IV - a world in the middle of nowhere. And this is where he is found by Jan Schneider - a man that cannot be where he is and yet he is. And he has a big story for Takeshi. The first novel showed us the world of the 25th century - with the human colonies and the virtual world and the functional immortality - the ability to get resleeved into another body when needed as long as your stack (which had been implanted on any human when being born) survives or you have a digital copy saved. A few artifacts are mentioned but the novel is human centric and it dies not answer how humanity got to this point. That second novel reveals all that. Humanity did not find the stars on its own and the Protectorate is built on top of a dead civilization. Once upon a time the humans made it to Mars and found the ruins of the Martians - including maps, showing the path to three dozen worlds. This is where the humans colonies were built - with a bit of chance and the inevitable mistakes. And it opened a new brand of archeologists - with a new name and a new thing to look for. And the big story is another one of those - a huge find that will change everything for everyone.And the chase is on - Takeshi finds someone to sponsor the whole thing and everyone is off to the site. Add some radiation, nanobes that are a bit too intelligent for their own good. Throw a Marsian spaceship, a gate and a few more unexplained actions, add a few betrayals and a world at a war and the story is as fascinating as the first one. The story has enough sex and even more darkness than the first one. And it is as different from it as humanly possible - Kovacs is in the middle of it again and it is the same world but it a way it is the complementary story of the first one. A bit more standard than the first and not what I expected from a sequel but still a very good one.
    • 3/5
      I love Morgan's writing, and I love Takeshi Kovacs, but even that couldn't save this novel. It's not terrible, but beside Altered Carbon it becomes dull and pointless. Maybe we're just seeing Kovacs on a standard, everyday mission (that involves alien artifacts and a war zone) but I'm not sure why we needed a switch to a space opera mercenary when former-elite soldier turned detective was working so well.
    • 2/5
      I didn't think this was a good follow up to Altered Carbon, a book I really liked. In it, Takeshi Kovacs is a 25th century ex-military noir detective who has been resleeved (lived quite a few lives) and who solves a murder/suicide mystery. It's a good tale. I expected more of the same. Now, in a sequel, you do expect the author to deviate a LITTLE from the original, or it'd be more of the same. Same with music. But this? In Broken Angels, Takeshi Kovacs is a mercenary who is persuaded to become a ... mercenary to find some leftover Martian garbage that may or may not be worth a fortune. And he has to do it in a nuclear war zone. Pretty different from the first. And he's changed in this book. He's darker. He's more introspective. Not necessarily bad things -- just different. Also the sex is different. In the first book, it fit the plot. In this book, you get the most ridiculous sex scene that's perhaps ever been written, in VR no less. Stupid. The sex scenes seem forced and I didn't like them. They also all seem boilerplate to me. All of the women do all of the same things in exactly the same order to Kovacs, I guess exactly as Morgan likes in real life. Gag. I didn't finish this book. It wasn't exactly terrible. I just started reading other books and set it down. After it had been on my table for a month, I realized I just was no longer interested, so I'm giving up on it. 'Fraid I can't recommend it.
    • 4/5
      The sexy man-beast Takeshi Kovacs is back in action, for yet another adventure! Yay! Get that sexy hunk a stripper pole to dance around. Don't bother with the g-string. Just let that hot wang flap in the breeze for us all to drool over.

      Damn. That sounded gay. I'm not 100% gay, okay? But goddamn. I'm 90000% gay for Takeshi Kovacs. I guess it's because he's just so good at what he does. He always wins. If it's mind games, a sword fight, a shootout, or a straight-out brawl, Kovacs will win every time. Because he's just that fucking good.

      Okay, enough of my drool...

      This book is about Kovacs teaming up with yet another group of mercenaries, to recover an important alien artifact. You see, pretty much all of the high-tech stuff in their world, they stole from the aliens.

      The problem is, those aliens were smart as fuck, and they put fun little booby traps in and around most of their artifacts, to wreak havoc with any fool who tries to snatch up such valuable items.

      It's crazy, because all the aliens are long past dead. Like centuries past dead. But their ghosts haunt the artifacts. Not real ghosts, of course. That'd be silly. I mean hologram type ghosts and such. Defense ghosts.

      This story isn't quite as good as the other Kovacs books, simply because there's much less anal porn. Hardly any fucking at all happens in this book. It's so sad. How can anyone deny such a hunky man-beast?

      Dammit. Now I've got to go scour the interwebs for hot Kovacs slash fic. Because he's so heterosexual in these books, that it actually offends me. How dare you keep that huge cock, just for the womens. How dare you!
    • 4/5
      Fantastic second book in the series.
    • 4/5
      Of course, not as brilliant as Altered Carbon, but then that is a tough act to follow. Still, excellent writing and staggering imagination. Richard is a major scibe and I will read him any day over blown up celebrities such as King.
    • 1/5
      Wow, not nearly as good Altered Carbon. In fact, really bad. The over-the-top graphic sex and violence are a turn off, as are the lame plot twists. Next!
    • 4/5
      I didn't feel this was quite as strong a book as "Altered Carbon", but that's relative - Morgan knows how to tell a story, and Takeshi Kovacs is just as fun as ever.
    • 5/5
      Second in the trilogy, this is one of the most haunting books I have read in a long while. Eerie and hard-boiled at the same time, Morgan's blend of science fiction, mystery and political fiction works but the addition of the "Martian" ship is truly weird and wonderful. Great series so far!
    • 4/5
      Before reading this I could not remember why I liked the first book - this defintly reminded me!
    • 4/5
      Altered Carbon was a great noir novel, perhaps the best noir I've read. It was also brilliant science fiction with a touch of cyber punk. I neither wanted nor expected Broken Angels to tread the same ground. In this novel, Broken Angels, Takeshi is back in the military. He's drawn into a get rich quick scheme involving ancient Martian technology. As usual, Morgan's plot descriptions sound cliched, but they aren't. These aren't the Martians we think of, and this isn't some mad caper. It's a war novel, and it comes with all that entails. Did I think it was as good as Altered Carbon? Not really. Takeshi is a hard character to write. He's a lot of different contradictions, which aren't easy to balance in a way that always makes sense. Some of Takeshi's actions sort of unwraveled at the end. I loved the direction the book took, but for me to feel it was genuine I think Morgan had to do a better job setting it up. Perhaps part of the problem was an ending the felt sort of rushed. I'm emphasizing the negatives, but in some respect, when you have a great writer like Morgan, the negatives actually stand out even more.This is a Takeshi Kovacs novel and a Morgan novel, so make no mistake, it is still excellent. I just felt it didn't quite live up to the original. This is a four star review, and if I hadn't seen what Morgan could be at his best, I would be raving. As it is, this was a good sequel to a superb book.I still have a high hopes for book three.
    • 2/5
      Nothing on Altered Carbon. Strangely disappointed after reading this.
    • 3/5
      A jump in time and space for Takeshi Kovacs. In this novel, we dump the detective stuff and go into a world of war, archaeology, corporate indifference, and martians! However, don't go expecting it to be some kind of Aurthur C. Clarke meets the Bourne Identity because you would be wrong. Just as Altered Carbon, the first book in the series, bases it's story, but only lightly touches on the fact that humans have downloadable consciousness, this book treats Martian archaeology as a stage prop for the real plot. If you want things to tie together, you need to read the next book, Woken Furies.