Woken Furies
Richard K. Morgan has received widespread praise for his astounding twenty-fifth-century novels featuring Takeshi Kovacs, and has established a growing legion of fans. Mixing classic noir sensibilities with a searing futuristic vision of an age when death is nearly meaningless, Morgan returns to his saga of betrayal, mystery, and revenge, as Takeshi Kovacs, in one fatal moment, joins forces with a mysterious woman who may have the power to shatter Harlan's World forever.Once a gang member, then a marine, then a galaxy-hopping Envoy trained to wreak slaughter and suppression across the stars, a bleeding, wounded Kovacs was chilling out in a New Hokkaido bar when some so-called holy men descended on a slim beauty with tangled, hyperwired hair. An act of quixotic chivalry later and Kovacs was in deep: mixed up with a woman with two names, many powers, and one explosive history.In a world where the real and virtual are one and the same and the dead can come back to life, the damsel in distress may be none other than the infamous Quellcrist Falconer, the vaporized symbol of a freedom now gone from Harlan's World. Kovacs can deal with the madness of AI. He can do his part in a battle against biomachines gone wild, search for a three-centuries-old missing weapons system, and live with a blood feud with the yakuza, and even with the betrayal of people he once trusted.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
12mentions
11people
2009–2024years
58% recommend42% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Woken Furies (the 3rd book) is my favorite of the trilogy, which is the other reason I'm salty about the Envoy rewrite, as it made reusing the plot impossible.
- AFAIK, most of the Burning Chrome short stories were originally published before the Sprawl novels, then later collected in the anthology? (Side note: you can buy original 80s copies of Omni magazine with the first publication for pretty cheap off eBay)
Other authors I've enjoyed, coming off Neuromancer-type Gibson:
Richard K. Morgan (Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, Woken Furies). Closest in tone. For god's sake don't watch the Amazon series for plot.
Effinger comes up on a lot of lists, although I haven't read it myself yet.
Vernor Vinge (A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky, The Children of the Sky). Space opera instead of cyberpunk, but shares early Gibson's "incremental exposition," where you figure things out gradually vs all at once.
Tbh, I think the best cyberpunk was always in short story form, and mostly before 1990.
- > Richard K. Morgan (Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, Woken Furies). Closest in tone. For god's sake don't watch the Amazon series for plot.
Also (different setting): Black Man/Thirteen and Thin Air.
- It's going to make Woken Furies (easily my favorite book of the series) pretty confusing.
And (personally) it felt like a cheap simplification of one of the most interesting series plot points.
- If this fascinates you, then you'll like Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan. Changing bodies is commonplace for the rich in these novels. They are quite excellent, if not a tad violent, so don't read them if that's not your thing.
The novels are way better than the Netflix S01, which was the first book. I'm guessing there will be 2 more seasons, one for each book.
- I've yet to read "Seveneves", but I felt the prologue to Alastair Reynolds' "Blue Remembered Earth" was very moving too. It involves our protagonists coming across a left-over AI tank, long buried. A sort of futuristic take on land-mines disguised as toys.
There's also some rather nightmarish scenarios in Richard Morgan's series about Takeshi Kovacs (I enjoyed beginning in the middle, with "Woken Furies") involving weaponized nano technology.
Neither are world-ending, but touches IMHO on some of the same things.
