In preparation for Altered Carbon Season 2, this past weekend I finished reading Broken Angels. I highly recommend you read the first novel that started it all, Altered Carbon, as there are some changes between the novel and Laeta Kalogridis’ Netflix adaptation, which I have talked about previously.

The Prequel: Altered Carbon

In case you’re unfamiliar, Altered Carbon is a Cyberpunk novel a-la hardboiled noir detective style, with lead Takeshi Kovacs whose consciousness, which is being digitally stores on a small circular disk called a stack, has been inserted into a human body “sleeve” in order to solve the mystery of the murder of an ultra-wealthy long-living man called Laurens Bancroft. Since in this world people can die but have their stacks stored in the cloud to download into other sleeves, Laurens has hired Takeshi to solve his own murder. The subsequent story is filled with action and intrigue as it describes in detail a super-hierarchical dystopian metropolis called Bay City (formerly San Francisco).

Broken Angels is…completely different.

If Altered Carbon was a noir detective story, Broken Angels feels more like a page from the Alien franchise, such as Prometheus. Kovacs arrives on the scene of a war in the mercenary unit of Carrera’s Wedge. In order to escape the bloody brutality of the conflict, he partners up with Schneider in order to find an archaelogue called Wardani in order to open a portal to a Martian dreadnought deep in space. No one knows much about the Martians, except that they were technologically superior and they disappeared, leaving behind all kinds of curious relics.

So how much of this will be in Season 2?

It’s been reported from Kalogridis that Season 2 of Altered Carbon probably won’t feature much from this book, since it takes place in such diverse places that it would be very costly to produce. However, Broken Angels has Carrera as the main antagonist, whose character is confirmed to be in Season 2 from the casting video released earlier this year, so this is a good book to get acquainted with the villain and understand why exactly he might have such a big beef with Kovacs. However, they also reported Danica Harlan, who is the main antagonist (sort of) in book 3 (Woken Furies), so it may be a mix of both. If the report from Radio Times is true that season 2 will be exploring identity and gender fluidity more, then it won’t be drawing its source material from Broken Angels, since there isn’t much of that present. So either it will be from Woken Furies, or Kalogridis will just deviate from the subject material entirely.

Revisiting Torture/Brutality

The book itself was very fun to read, and surprisingly linear. Unlike Altered Carbon with a wide plethora of different characters and intrigue and things happening at the same time, Woken Furies follows Kovacs slowly add members to his team one at a time. First with Schneider, then Wardani, then Hand (the corporate benefactor of the expedition) and finally the support team of about 8 or so special ops members they bring back from the dead.

The Mystery of the Martians

Like the first book, there are scenes in this book that felt very imaginative in its brutality. One of my complaints about both the book and the series Altered Carbon is the virtual reality torture scene. A similar scene happens in this book, which makes me wonder why Morgan decides to put these parts in. The mystery of what happened to the Martians and who/what they were was very interesting, and it’s a question that the book never fully answers (and rightly so).

The Disillusion of War and Soldiers

One interesting element to this book, which can be slow at times as the team waits for the portal to be opened, is in their interactions with each other. One team member, Jiang Jianping, is the idealistic soldier who doesn’t understand Kovacs’ aversion to fighting. In their discussions Kovacs is portrayed as being older and more experienced, having seen the pointless conflicts that rarely resolves more than corporate or political interests, and this was a nice introspective into why Kovacs is clearly “ex-envoy” and more mercenary than anything else. Despite being part of a mercenary unit, his choice to ultimately abandon them in order to escape the conflict is explored as well, which I enjoyed as a side-narrative to the mysterious expedition into Martian history.

Final Review: 8.5/10

Broken Angels is an excellent addition to the Kovacs trilogy, although it definitely feels like a standalone novel at the same time. Other than being a little bit more familiar with the titular Kovacs, there’s no need to read the first novel in order to read the second. I’m curious to see what the third novel entails, and if it connects at all to the first or second books. But Morgan has done an interesting thing here in shaking up his type of novel. The dialogues were interesting, the action fast, the pacing good although a little slow at times. There were moments of surprising sexual scenes like the first novel, as well as strong brutality and torture which I felt were both somewhat unnecessary. Although themes of the meaning of war and the role of soldiers who fight in them is explored a bit, there isn’t a lot of deep discussions in this novel. It really feels like a Cyberpunk version of Prometheus, without the Xenomorphs but with added dark tech. Still, very interesting, enjoyable, and I look forward to seeing what Woken Furies has in store.