What makesAltered Carbona winner is the quality of Morgan's prose. Intriguing and inventive in equal proportions and refuses to let go until the last page.' -PETER HAMILTON 'AN EXCITING SF/CRIME HYBRID, with an intricate (but always plausible) plot, a powerful noir atmosphere, and enough explosive action to satisfy the most die-hard thriller fan.' -SF Site 'AN EXHILARATING AND GLOSSY ADVENTURE. Altered Carbonhits the floor running and then starts to accelerate. 'This seamless marriage of hardcore cyberpunk and hard-boiled detective tale is an astonishing first novel.' -London Times 'AN ASTONISHING PIECE OF WORK.

For Kovacs, the shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning.

Dispatched one hundred eighty 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. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. 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.

While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N.

Takeshi kovacs novels