Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - Altered Carbon

Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

22 reviews

midnightsharkist's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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iirreeaadd's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

This book was fine. It's core mystery was really solid and I liked the detective aspect of it a lot. The idea of altered carbon and no permanent death and how that would change society is an interesting concept that I enjoyed them digging into. The overall cyberpunkness of it was pretty great too, though it took me awhile to keep all the terms and slang straight. I did like how the cast was overall diverse as well, however the persistent male gaze-iness of it and hyper fixation on the prostitution side of the world was something that turned me off. The plot was also hard to follow at points and not all the characters actions seemed to make sense.

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has3000's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

A noir crime book downloaded into a sci-fi body, and ready to kill.

The premise is that hundreds of years from now, human consciousness can be stored in a device in one’s neck, so if you can afford it you can be downloaded into a new body.

There are so many interesting philosophical and technological facets to this, and Morgan does a good job of at least mentioning them, sometimes fleshing them out.

As far as the…”unsavory” things that often crop up in a noir book: The book definitely has a fair bit of sexual content, but it’s not the focus. Drugs, sex, etc. are mostly shown as things that matter less when a body is impermanent. I thought that it was being racist until I realized that “Mohican” was another term for “Mohawk”, and not a reference to Native Americans. Otherwise, the references to race are mostly to describe a characters new body, and callbacks to the MCs involvement in a brutal assault on a Muslim(?) planet. And on sexism, I felt (as a man) that the book did okay. The MC was definitely male, and definitely attracted to women, and there were several women with altered bodies, as well as whorehouses, etc. But there was also a brief aside about the MC having been in female bodies, and how women have a higher pain tolerance than men. Most of it felt like an attempt to accurately display how humanity acts, rather than sexism for sexism’s sake.
There was no LGBTQ representation, which could have fit in super well here, but in a book from 23 years ago that isn’t super surprising.

Overall, having watched the show first I still really enjoyed this book, with my main genre being Sci-fi but hardly ever reading crime novels.

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hanfox's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

An interesting read but I don't think I will seek out the sequel. The concept and world of this story were interesting. It was a future that was easy to picture from our current reality and the depiction of inequity felt so realistic it was painful. Richard K Morgan unflinchingly wrote characters who were fleshed out human beings with both good and bad within them. It was well writte and I did stay engaged until the end. I think my only problem was that this story felt strongly framed from the male prospective. Maybe it was the repeated sexual and physical violence against women or the repeated mentions of hard cocks and hormones, but it made it hard as a female reader to feel fully enthralled. I felt as though these otherwise scary realities were just plot points instead of the deeper social commentary it could be of how the stacks continued to perpetuate inequal power dynamics. Plus for a world where bodies are interchangeable it was pretty cishet lol!! Either was I did like the characters and the world but I don't think I would go back as it just didn't feel like a story for me.

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