Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #216252 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Woken Furies is Richard Morgan's third noir SF adventure starring combat veteran Takeshi Kovacs, who debuted in Altered Carbon (2002; winner of the Philip K. Dick Award). Kovacs operates in an interstellar future of extreme violence and exotic weaponry, where swapping bodies is as easy as trading in an old car.

The setting is Harlan's World, 95% ocean, where ancient alien orbital systems still vaporize anything that flies too high. Kovacs, older and madder, is running a private vendetta against Taliban-like fundamentalists whose principles--in a world where death is reversible--forced an old girl-friend and her child to die permanently. Wounded and on the run as usual, he escapes by joining a "deCom" squad hunting down human-built weapons systems that don't want to be decommissioned. Soon he's entangled with a woman who (some of the time) seems to be a reincarnation of long-dead revolutionary leader Quellcrist Falconer…

Meanwhile, the dictatorial ruling family of Harlan's World has set the deadliest possible assassin on Kovacs' trail--an illegal copy of his younger self, in a brand-new body.

High-energy complications follow. There's unexpected violence in a virtual-reality monastery. Kovacs and "Quellist" sympathizers plan a crazy James Bond assault on an impregnable island fortress, an attack that ends in a surprise twist. The idealistic Quellcrist (if that's who she is) has the key to a genetic time-bomb never before used: "A whole new form of death." Even those implacable orbital weapons that smite high-fliers with "angelfire" have secrets of their own.

Morgan's knack for grisly set-pieces and heart-stopping violence makes for compulsive reading--emphatically not for the squeamish. Against all odds, his fast-moving choreography of pursuits, escapes, shoot-outs, reversals and betrayals finally ends in a satisfying touch of compassion, a trace of hope. A superior SF thriller. --David Langford

Barry Seddon, Manchester Evening News
"I have been hooked on his style and the far-out imagination which magically transforms his tales into adventures of the SF variety."

Review
'Richard Morgan, never less than engrossing, his mastery of the SF thriller has brought a well deserved new kudos to the genre.' (Peter F Hamilton )

""Morgan creates a narrative which is akin to a weapons-loaded ship crewed by angry pirates. An action packed thriller full of brilliantyl choreographed set-piece scenes." (SFX )

"Underneath all the crowd pleasing violence, it is an interesting tale" 3/5 (Anthony Brown Dreamwatch )

"The characterisations are vibrant... a rich plot and trademark conceptual freestlying.. hits the retina like a laser beam and it's a true page turner." (Richard Bagley Morning Star )

"This is a terrific book; the only problem is that it's quite hard to know quite what Morgan can do for an encore." (Alex Sarll PA News )

"As inventively nasty as Morgan's other novels about Kovacs. Morgan's world is one of unbridled capitalist thuggery where more goes wrong than the rest of us easily imagine." (Roz Kaveney TIME OUT )

Richard Morgan's hardboiled SF books about the grimly blood-spattered 'hero' Takeshi Kovacs come with a formidable reputation and it's easy to see why. The third book, WOKEN FURIES, is terrific. Morgan's narrative can seem unsympathetically inhuman and amoral, only to pull you up short with deliciously ingenious SF twists on psycho-thriller melodramas. Remember, when a femme fatale starts chanting machine code at an intimate moment, it is time to be very afraid. His writing is rewardingly dense (DREAMWATCH )

(A) Maelstrom of plasmafrag rifle fire, neurachem enhancements and alien constructs. A third outing for Richard Morgan's anti-hero Takeshi Kovacs, Woken Furies marks something of a consolidation point both for the hard-bitten ex-special forces operative, and the calculating heavy metal noir environment he inhabits. (EDGE )

Morgan's knack for grisly set-pieces and heart-stopping violence makes for compulsive reading. A superior SF thriller. (Dave Langford Amazon )

"Cyberpunk continues to work because the original was built on the foundations of hard-boiled detective fiction, and readers instantly understand the rules. Morgan takes those rules and twists them just enough to add uncertainty to the mix." (Jon Courtenay Grimwood GUARDIAN )

'In the last few years, Richard Morgan has really taken the scene by storm. I recommend WOKEN FURIES. Kovacs' character is one of the strongest to come out of SF in recent years, and his universe has been crafted with vast depth and detail. The social and technological environment is rich, believable and absorbing, pulling the reader in." (INTERZONE )

"I have been hooked on his style and the far-out imagination which magically transforms his tales into adventures of the SF variety." (Barry Seddon Manchester Evening News )

Customer Reviews

Fast, Hard and very Heavy
This is the third outing for Morgan's anti-hero Takeshi Kovacs and here he certainly hits his stride.

This time we get to learn the protagonist's origins, we see him in his home territory and find out just how he became the man he is.

You can only be new once, so this is not as startling as Morgan's debut.

It is better.

If you've read Richard Morgan before you can guess that this is a tensely plotted, extremely violent science fiction thriller.

You may also expect an intricate and clever plot.

He delivers in spades, giving startling, plausible twists and shock revelations.

What you may not expect is that it has a philosophy, a political philosophy, no less. And that gives it the kind of heart and depth hinted at in Morgan's previous Kovacs novels Altered Carbon and Broken Angels. Anyone who dismissed these books as lightweight will be pleasantly surprised at just how serious, relevant and resonant to the times that Woken Furies is.

If Altered Carbon was a toy for the boys, the Woken Furies is something grown ups of varieties can appreciate.

Deeper and deeper into Takeshi's World(s)
Yes, the best Richard Morgan yet.
Yes, a tale that helps us understand Kovacs' behaviour in this and previous novels, without you necessarily agreeing with many of his actions. This is despite his own (and Morgan's ??) attempts to justify them.
Yes, a book that seriously rewards re-reads, as I for one tore through it first time and missed some key content. Morgan's prose really claws you along.

What really opens the character is his interaction with past friends, as in previous books despite some "romance" he has been the violent loner par excellence. Here, Takeshi explores old (and some new) relationships with more humanity and credibility, not least with his younger self !

Because of the above, and the fundamentally more complex and fulfilling plot, I would recommend reading Altered Carbon and Broken Angels first.

My only reservations are that it is fairly simple to spot the numerous plot/sci-fi influences, but hey, they are so well woven-in that you just don't care.

Personally, if this is Takeshi's send-off, it's a great one. There are no doubt more places he can go, and more beings/objects he can obliterate, but I hope Richard Morgan doesn't do a "Culture" with this series and begin to retread ideas....

Keep-You-Awake Fury
Morgan does it again. Another tautly written, tense thriller set in the world of Takeshi Kovacs, body sleeves and virtual death. As usual, there are plenty of high tech toys and the usual helpings of sex and violence to keep the cyberpunks happy. But Morgan's strength is his use of language to develop a powerful atmosphere and to create a believable world populated by real characters, married with a well-crafted story-line. The intensity of the story keeps you gripped from the first few pages, and the twists and turns of the plot will keep you guessing.
Welcome to Harlan's World. Welcome to deCom.