In some ways I preferred Broken Angels to Altered Carbon - although still gritty, there was a lot less of the prostitution/underworld material that made the first volume so problematic. Broken Angels also looks more closely at the relationship with the remnants of the Martian society that was hinted at in the first book, and some interesting bits are added to the world building. The characters are still interesting, if somewhat less developed than in the first book, and this is where I feel like the book lost some points: most of these characters feel flat to me, or complex only in uninteresting or underdeveloped ways. Hand, Wardani, Carrera, and even Kovacs himself don't seem to have any complexity to their motivations. Everyone is afraid and angry and broken in varying measures - and while everyone is interesting because of the flaws and pathologies, they don't really grow as characters. They start broken, and then remain broken - or die. Also, Kovacs seems more Gary Stu in this one, while being less of an Envoy in the controlling-people-and-figuring-stuff-out way and much more of the unstoppable-killing-machine way.

Amazing universe, depressing exploration, characters that I only occasionally cared about, and more violence than really necessary for the story.