Altered Carbon

By: Richard K. Morgan

Narrated by: Todd McLaren

In the 25th century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person's consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or "sleeve") making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.

Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched 180 light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats "existence" as something that can be bought and sold. For Kovacs, the shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning.

Altered Carbon is the first Takeshi Kovacs novel. Don't miss the sequels Broken Angels and Woken Furies.©2003 Richard K. Morgan (P)2005 Tantor Media, Inc.

Critic reviews

"This far-future hard-boiled detective story is a lovely virtual-reality romp." (Booklist)
"Fast-paced, densely textured, impressive....Morgan's 25th-century Earth is convincing, while the questions he poses about how much Self is tied to body chemistry and how the rich believe themselves above the law are especially timely." (Publishers Weekly)

Good story with a few unpleasant suprises.

The human civilization which Mr. Morgan paints in his trilogy is an intriguing place. While the concept of moving personalities body to body is not new, the way he approaches the subject matter is interesting, as are the underlying moral issues that are touched around the edges. I found myself thinking of the film noir genre, complete with the world weary detective who has nothing left but the job. The two jarring notes are the narrator, who makes a valiant effort to characterize, but falls short. The second are the graphic, nearly pornographic sex scenes. While the sex is not gratuitous, the graphic detail using the vulgar speech is jarring in the flow of the novel.

well done

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Intricate but not overly complicated.Entertaining. Worth the download.

It was okay

The narration was great, The story wasn't. Nearly didn't bother to finish it and wasn't all that rewarding having finished it

Everything to love about gritty sci-fi

Very gritty hard-boiled film noir sci-fi.
Todd McLaren's voice has a good vocal range for this book. Strong storyline, and creative ideas about the stacks.
A very convincing futuristic world, and the psychology behind each character is believable, and interesting.

Audio recording quality on this book is poor

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

This was an okay book for me. I enjoyed the noir feel to it combined with the scifi, but overall I gave it only 3 stars.

What didn’t you like about Todd McLaren’s performance?

I liked Todd's voice acting, but there were some significant problems with the recording.

Any additional comments?

This book was difficult to listen to. While the voice actor seemed to do a good job of narrating the story, the volume level was all over the map. I had to regularly turn the volume up and down. Also, it was sometimes hard to understand what the narrator was saying, as if he wasn't articulating his consonants clearly enough. However, this may have been a microphone problem or technical issue.

Creative plot; writing could have been better

Enjoyed the plot. The writing sometimes became trite. Foul language and sex scenes didn't add to the story.

well narrated - good plot

Would you listen to Altered Carbon again? Why?

yes, I'll keep on my i touch and recommend

What about Todd McLaren???s performance did you like?

narration was very good - even though only one voice - nuances in the tone and delivery kept the story lively and interesting.

I actually liked the TV series better.

For the first time I actually liked the TV adaptation better than the book. I found Morgan's writing style a bit hard to follow. He is overly descriptive of complete minutiae and by the time he is done describing something completely irrelevant to the story you lose track of what the hell is going on. This might be OK reading in text, but in an audiobook, it made me actually tune out and have to rewind often to just figure out what was going on. The narration was good although McLaren really needs to work on his female voices and "screaming" which sounded more like a hoarse whisper.

narrator lisp

After reading all of the glowing reviews for this audiobook I was excited to listen to it, only to discover in the first few minutes that the narrator has an incredibly annoying lisp. It becomes less pronounced as the book proceeds because you get used to it, but I find this problematic. Moreover, there are some pretty blatant (i.e., audible) splices of audio tracks on this production.
The story is excellent and compelling but I thought listeners should be warned about the narration.

Don't expect it to wait for you to catch up.

Where does Altered Carbon rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Altered Carbon is different than most of the books I've listened to so far combining a futuristic view of humanity while still maintaining the age old faults and vices. For me it was a nice listen for three main reasons: 1. I couldn't always predict where the story was leading 2. when you were introduced with something that seemed insubstantial, it would rear it's head later being an integral part of the story and 3. despite it's grimy beginning, Takeshi Kovacs seemed to have some redeeming qualities after all.

Who was your favorite character and why?

There is only one character (Kovacs) to really appreciate here as a favorite while other characters were interesting in their detail.

Have you listened to any of Todd McLaren’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I've listened to Altered Carbon and Broken Angels. Todd's narration spoiled me for when I listened to the third book, Woken Furies, it was hard to stay interested in the story missing the narrator from the previous two books.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No extreme reaction just a continued level of interest throughout.

Any additional comments?

Well worth the listen in my opinion but be warned, some of the sex scenes are very graphic but still didn't take away from the overall story.