title: Broken Angels: A Novel (Takeshi Kovacs)
author:  Richard K. Morgan 
description: Critics have compared Richard Morgan's first novel, <i><a href="/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345457684/${0}">Altered Carbon</a></i>, to the classic hardboiled fiction of Raymond Chandler. The comparison doesn't accurately describe Morgan's second novel, <i>Broken Angels</i>. Morgan's prose never approaches Chandler's metaphoric excess, and Morgan's antihero, Takeshi Kovacs, doesn't wisecrack nearly as often as Chandler's hero, Philip Marlowe. Also, Kovacs's far-future universe is considerably darker than Marlowe's noir world. In Kovacs's universe, high-tech implants called "stacks" record memory and personality; this means soldiers can be sent to their deaths, have their stacks implanted in new bodies, and be sent to their deaths again, and again, and again. Generals needn't quibble about wasting lives in massacres or nuclear explosions. The slaughtered soldiers will soon be back in action--unless their stacks aren't recovered. Then their consciousness will go mad, isolated in an indestructible, inescapable virtual reality. The proper term for the Takeshi Kovacs novels isn't "hardboiled." It's "brutal."
zlib_text: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  BROKEN ANGELS
  
  
  **• • •**
  
  
  RICHARD K. MORGAN
  
  
  Ballantine Books  
  New York
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A Del Rey® Book
  
  
  Published by The Random House Publishing Group
  
  
  Copyright © 2003 by Richard K. Morgan
  
    
  
  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
  Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Publishing
  Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in
  Great Britain by Gollancz, an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group, in 2003.
  
    
  
  Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of
  Random House, Inc.
  
    
  
  [www.delreydigital.com](http://www.delreydigital.com)
  
  
    
  
  
  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
  
  
  Morgan, Richard K., 1965–
  
  
  Broken angels / Richard K. Morgan.
  
  
  p. cm.
  
  
  I. Title.
  
  
  PS3613.O748B76 2004
  
  
  813′.6—dc22
  
  
  2003062515
  
  
    
  
  
  eISBN: 978-0-345-45773-8
  
  
  v3.0_r3
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _Table of Contents_
  
  
  [Title Page](Morg_9780345457738_epub_tp_r1.htm#tp)
  
  
  [Co