Takeshi Kovacs is the protagonist of Richard K. Morgan's science fiction novels, Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies. The series takes place in a future where human consciousness can be digitized and transferred between bodies, or "sleeves," giving individuals virtual immortality.
Titles in This Set:
- Altered Carbon
- Broken Angels
- Woken Furies
In Altered Carbon, Kovacs is a former soldier and criminal who is hired by a wealthy businessman to investigate his own murder. The novel is a hard-boiled detective story set in a future-noir world where the lines between morality and criminality are blurred.
Broken Angels take Kovacs on a new mission, this time to a planet embroiled in a violent war over alien technology. The novel explores themes of war, politics, and greed, as Kovacs and his team must navigate dangerous terrain and face enemies from all sides.
Woken Furies sees Kovacs returning to his home planet, Harlan's World, where he becomes embroiled in a political and personal conflict. The novel delves into themes of identity, memory, and revenge, as Kovacs confronts his own past and fights to protect his future.
Overall, the Takeshi Kovacs novels are a thrilling and thought-provoking series that explore the limits of technology and the human condition. Morgan's vivid world-building and complex characters make these novels a must-read for any science fiction fan.
From the publisher:
Altered Carbon
This must-read story is a confident, action-and-violence-packed thriller, and future classic noir SF novel from a multi-award-winning author. Four hundred years from now mankind is strung out across a region of interstellar space inherited from an ancient civilization discovered on Mars. The colonies are linked together by the occasional sublight colony ship voyages and hyperspatial data-casting. Human consciousness is digitally freighted between the stars and downloaded into bodies as a matter of course.
Broken Angels
Fifty years after the events of ALTERED CARBON, Takeshi Kovacs is serving as a mercenary in the Procterate-sponsored war to put down Joshuah Kemp's revolution on the planet Sanction IV. He is offered the chance to join a covert team chasing a prize whose value is limitless -- and whose dangers are endless. Here is a novel that takes mankind to the brink. A breakneck-paced crime thriller, ALTERED CARBON took its readers deep into the universe Morgan had so compellingly realized without ever letting them escape the onward rush of the plot. BROKEN ANGELS melds SF, the war novel, and the spy thriller to take the reader below the surface of this future and lay bare the treacheries, betrayals, and follies that leave man so ill-prepared for the legacy he has been given: the stars. This is SF at its dizzying best: superb, yet subtle, world-building; strong yet sensitive characterization; awesome yet believable technology, thilling yet profound writing. Richard Morgan is set to join the genre's worldwide elite.
Woken Furies
This is high-action, ideas-driven noir SF of the highest order. Morgan has already established himself as an SF author of global significance. Takeshi Kovacs has come home. Home to Harlan's World. An ocean planet with only 5% of its landmass poking above the dangerous and unpredictable seas. Try and get above the weather in anything more sophisticated than a helicopter and the Martian orbital platforms will burn you out of the sky. And death doesn't just wait for you in the seas and the skies. On land, from the tropical beaches and swamps of Kossuth to the icy, machine-infested wastes of New Hokkaido the hard-won gains of the Quellist revolution have been lost. The First Families, the corporations, and the Yakuza have a stranglehold on everything.