A review by krakentamer
Altered Carbon, by Richard K. Morgan
4.0
I'll be honest here - I almost threw in the towel at about the 25% mark. I'm far from being a prude, but I was just not in the mood for the amount of explicit sex and torture in this book. I felt that it was gratuitious and not essential to the plot; that the author was just showing off. But I stuck with it, and looking back, I realized that the characters' motivations later in the book would've seemed lacking or false if I hadn't experienced it with them.
The other thing that started off negatively for me was the main reason that I put off reading the book as long as I did - the basic premise of downloading your personality to a computer bores me to death. However, the technology behind this as presented in the book was very ... interesting. I almost said "believeable", but that would be a stretch. Instead, I was treated to a view of a world (universe, really) in which there really is a complete disconnect between SELF and BODY. There were many thought-provoking avenues opened up to me from here, and I'll be thinking about the implications for quite a while.
The other thing that started off negatively for me was the main reason that I put off reading the book as long as I did - the basic premise of downloading your personality to a computer bores me to death. However, the technology behind this as presented in the book was very ... interesting. I almost said "believeable", but that would be a stretch. Instead, I was treated to a view of a world (universe, really) in which there really is a complete disconnect between SELF and BODY. There were many thought-provoking avenues opened up to me from here, and I'll be thinking about the implications for quite a while.