Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan, Book 2: Broken Angels

I read Altered Carbon as part of my investigation into sf about "life extension"; I ultimately did not include it on my syllabus, but I was interested enough that I put the sequels on my reading list.

Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan

Published: 2003
Read: November 2025

Broken Angels is very similar to Altered Carbon in some ways, and very different in others. It would have been easy, I reckon, to write another novel about Takeshi Kovacs investigating crimes, once again playing with the tropes of the noir genre. Richard Morgan does maintain the gritty, violent tone of Altered Carbon. Even moreso than in Altered Carbon, too, one can tell this isn't just violence for the sake of violence; this isn't just shock value. Rather, Morgan is very much interested in how politics and capital interact to create massive acts of violence, and how people react to the structures that enable violence. And, given the advanced technology of Morgan's future world, how what already happens in our world could get even worse. It sounds somewhat clinical and banal when I describe it, but I think it's really well done, and probably the best part of the book.

What I missed from Altered Carbon, though, was the setting and the (sub)genre; putting the story on Earth and making it a mystery let Morgan explore the complexities of how immortality technology and mind transference would impact society on any number of levels. Broken Angels is set on an Earth colony, and is more aligned with the mil sf subgenre (though a particularly antipatriotic strain of it, I would say), and thus we don't get as much of what hooked me in Altered Carbon. I think what Morgan is doing, Morgan does quite well, but it's less to my taste.

Still, in the next book Kovacs will be returning to his home planet, and the little glimpses of it we get throughout Broken Angels are fascinating: a place broken by political philosophy and sectarian violence. I think Morgan can go some good stuff with these ingredients, so I am looking forward to the next book.