Mass Market Paperback, 544 pages
English language
Published Feb. 28, 2006 by Del Rey.
It's the twenty-fifth century, and advances in technology have redefined life itself. A person's consciousness can now be stored in the brain and downloaded into a new body (or "sleeve"), making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen. Onetime U.N. Envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Resleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats existence as something that can be bought and sold. For Kovacs, the shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning.
At first I was kind of put off by the noir-style narration but once I got over that, it is a fun story in a very interesting cyberpunk setting. There are quite a few surprising twists and reveals which kept me guessing until the end. If you like crime novels and/or cyberpunk, you'll probably enjoy this.
I really enjoyed this book. An hard-boiled, engaging story which aligns with the themes and the style of its genre, but succeeds at the same time in creating something really unique. Language is simple, straight to the point; explicit at times, but under no circumstances vulgar. A Dense, intricate plot, a crescendo of suspense.
One of the few cases where I come to a book after seeing a movie or TV show, and one of the seriously few cases where I like both pretty much equally, and am cool with how the overall divergence between the two got assembled.
Not my normal speed for writing style, but the world and character building were a hell of a lot of fun.
The central idea of the book is great, that is, in the future we are able to transfer our minds into other bodies (sleeves) and that permanent death is not so common anymore. I enjoyed the world building, a kind of dystopian future where crime is everywhere and there are powerful corrupt people involved in government and security issues. The plot of the book starts well as Kovaks, the anti-hero protagonist is appointed to carry on an investigation about the supposed suicide of a very rich and powerful man. The plot slowly becomes very intricated, and I confess that by the end of the book everything seemed way to complex for me to grasp.
I was more interested in exploring the "humans as data" speculation than ticking off the noir essentials (hardbodied femme fatales, covered up depravities, a suffering gumshoe, etc), but the book gets around to all of it with solid writing. It may even manage to exaggerate a genre that embraces exaggeration to begin with.
I almost rated this 2 stars. There were some parts I liked, and others I didn't. Particularly, I felt like sex was overused in the book. To me, it felt like it was used as an excuse to say "Hey, this is an ADULT book!!!" when instead, it took me out of the story. I really enjoyed the mystery aspect of this book, though that's not surprising since I'm a fan of mysteries.
