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Thirteen
by Richard K. Morgan
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$15.00 |
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Paperback
Publisher: Del Rey
ISBN13: 9780345480897
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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The future isn’t what it used to be since Richard K. Morgan arrived on the scene. He unleashed Takeshi Kovacs–private eye, soldier of fortune, and all-purpose antihero–into the body-swapping, hard-boiled, urban jungle of tomorrow in Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies, winning the Philip K. Dick Award in the process. In Market Forces, he launched corporate gladiator Chris Faulkner into the brave new business of war-for-profit. Now, in Thirteen, Morgan radically reshapes and recharges science fiction yet again, with a new and unforgettable hero in Carl Marsalis: hybrid, hired gun, and a man without a country . . . or a planet.
Marsalis is one of a new breed. Literally. Genetically engineered by the U.S. government to embody the naked aggression and primal survival skills that centuries of civilization have erased from humankind, Thirteens were intended to be the ultimate military fighting force. The project was scuttled, however, when a fearful public branded the supersoldiers dangerous mutants, dooming the Thirteens to forced exile on Earth’s distant, desolate Mars colony. But Marsalis found a way to slip back–and into a lucrative living as a bounty hunter and hit man before a police sting landed him in prison–a fate worse than Mars, and much more dangerous.
Luckily, his “enhanced” life also seems to be a charmed one. A new chance at freedom beckons, courtesy of the government. All Marsalis has to do is use his superior skills to bring in another fugitive. But this one is no common criminal. He’s another Thirteen–one who’s already shanghaied a space shuttle, butchered its crew, and left a trail of bodies in his wake on a bloody cross-country spree. And like his pursuer, he was bred to fight to the death. Still, there’s no question Marsalis will take the job. Though it will draw him deep into violence, treachery, corruption, and painful confrontation with himself, anything is better than remaining a prisoner. The real question is: can he remain sane–and alive–long enough to succeed?
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Never boring or dumb |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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I first discovered Richard K Morgan through comics (his unfortunately overlooked excellent Black Widow stories for Marvel: Black Widow, Vol. 1: Homecoming, Black Widow Vol. 2: The Things They Say About Her (Mighty Avengers)) and was immediately entranced by the intelligence of his themes and ideas. A true "futurist", Morgan's fiction is full of technology, products, politics and culture that make sense as an extrapolation of the world around us here and now. And when he is at his best, he is capable of creating compelling characters to inhabit his fascinating worlds.
Thirteen is Morgan at not quite his best. All of his strengths are present. Too often, though, the scene is set by forced exposition. It's interesting exposition, and I can only think of a couple of occasions where it is so obvious that it takes you out of the story - but it should and could be more streamlined into the narrative. My other knock is that the semi-satirical approach toward the political map of the former US lessened the impact of some of the more primary (and more successfully presented) themes of the novel like genetics and prejudice.
Minor gripes aside, this is a smart, exciting, emotional thriller of a novel that has me even more anxious to read Morgan's future work.
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| Yanomamo in the Near Future |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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This excessively long book is based on a simple idea about human evolution. With the development of agriculture and sedentary civilizations, certain personality traits were the subject of negative selection. This negative selection resulted in loss of brain features producing charismatic, powerful, somewhat anti-social males. In the near future, genetic engineering to resurrect a cadre of these males as super-soldiers. These men (variant thirteens) are essentially exaggerations of Napoleon Chagnon's descriptions of Yanomamo warriors. One of these thirteens is the protagonist of this book. The near future is a rather messy and somewhat dystopian world of nano-technology, genetic engineering, and fractured political systems, including breakup of the USA. The plot pits the protagonist against another thirteen.
Both the basic idea other aspects of the book have significant defects. The idea of these sorts of atavisms being typical of hunter-gatherer cultures and genetically driven are far-fetched. The suggestion that such individuals would constitute a different human species is completely wrong. The excessively complex plot, gratuitous violence and sex, and wooden writing obscure the intellectual value of the ideas. To be fair to Morgan, he does try to introduce some more sophisticated elements into the plotting, notably a recurrent theme of sibling conflict, but these touches are generally lost in a welter of bloodly scenes.
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| Cheap crap |
| Customer Rating: 1 out of 5 |
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I am a voracious reader of SF and tend not to be overly critical. I read a couple of the Kovacs novels by this author and found them to be "OK" (but not great). This one here though is so bad that I even overcame my usual laziness and sat down to write a brief review. You can't say you haven't been warned. Plot: humanity has bred a small group of superhuman soldier-criminals (the "thirteens") who are now either dead or locked up somewhere. One got out and is now killing lots of people. Another one is sent to track him down. Which he does. That's it!
As was the case with previous books by this author, the plot involves lots of gratuitous violence - which is getting real old.. This is science fiction but there isn't a single fresh idea in this book. No new technology, no new social concepts, nothing. Everything in this book is recycled from somebody else's ideas, the language is cheap and tired, the characters are flatter than cartoon characters and the plot is la-di-la. All characters, regardless of their cultural, ethnic, linguistic or social background use the f-word liberally. There doesn't seem to be a page in the whole book where it isn't used. People are always "shooting sharp glances", or "grin" or clench fists.. you get the idea. The lazy language is an insult. Nobody should charge money for this.
In this category, read Walter Jon Williams instead, for example "Voice of the Whirlwind".
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| A wonderful book |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I discovered Richard K. Morgan when I read Altered Carbon, which I loved. Sequels to that weren't as great. Now Thirteen, set in a different universe, has become my new favorite Morgan book.
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| Very cool, hard to put down. |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Things I liked about the book:
Characters - the depth was enough to get you involved and interested in the 2 main characters, maybe a bit much though.
Theme - hunting down a cannibalistic sociopath who's been genetically enhanced? sure, I want to see how that goes, and enjoyed the hunt and how it evolved/twists as it went on.
Atmosphere - I thought the future world envisioned here was scarily possible, with Jesusland sounding a bit too likely to become reality.
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