Woken Furies

Ik herinner mij dat ik het goed vond, maar een paar maand later zelfs niet meer het flauwste idee hebben waar het over ging, is dat een goed teken? Ofwel was het boek niet echt dát, ofwel begin ik mentaal af te takelen. Nee, dat is dus geen goed teken.

”We are all chasing ghosts, Kovacs-san. Living as long as we do now, how could we not be.”

Man…. I wanted so bad for this series to be more than it ended up being. I found the first book amazing, the second book still good (but way different), and had hopes that it’d find its stride again in the third book to bring it all home again. It does not. In fact, it’s a super mediocre ending to a series that started out so great.

Kovacs gets spit out again, this time back home on Harlan’s World, resleeved and living out a personal grudge against—well, that’s the question for half of the book, isn’t it? As the reader, we’re not clued in on what Kovacs is up to personally until after things have already kicked off. Sure we’re along on his cyberpunk adventure as he hunts people down, but we don’t know why he’s hunting them down. Somewhere along the way, he gets wrapped up in Quellist politics, and we get entire segments of the book devoted to Harlan’s World political science and we’re treated to lengthy political debates amongst two groups of people that will never see eye to eye.

Also, that ending. Extensive ending spoilers here: I was all geared up for a Kovacs v. Kovacs showdown, but even that conclusion was taken away from me by a trigger-happy Jad. Talk about anticlimactic.

The cast of characters is extensive, way more than needed to exist for this book’s story to be told. The story itself felt really disjointed after Kovacs gets in good with the Quellists, and I hope you like copious amounts of sex, because there’s copious amounts of sex. There’s bits and pieces in here of what I liked so much from the other books, but you have to dig for them amongst the Quellisms and sexytimes.

I don’t know, disappointing ending to something that started out so great. Not a terrible book if you know what you’re getting into and like that sort of thing, but it definitely was a bad note to end the series on.

J'abandonne ce roman après en avoir lu un gros tiers car l'excès de scènes d'action m'ennuie profondément et me donne envie que de sauter des chapitres entiers. Si l'action a toujours été très présente dans les deux précédents romans de cette trilogie, le dosage me paraît ici déséquilibré. Tant pis, je n'irai au bout des aventures de Takeshi Kovacs, mais je n'y prenais aucun plaisir dans ce troisième et dernier volume.

Couldn't finish it.
It's very rare that I don't finish books I've bought...but this one was boring and tedious.
The first book was great.
The second was a mediocre Starship Troopers-esque bore-fest.
This book was intolerably boring and uninteresting so I'm shelving it and not recommending it at all.

Not the best in the series.

I primi due libri con il protagonista “Tak” Kovacs li ho divorati, ed ho aspettato la traduzione di quest'ultimo con ansia crescente.

Smania che è andata purtroppo scemando durante la lettura. Ho trovato questo libro troppo infarcito di analisi politiche sul contesto del mondo della storia (contrapposizione tra le Grandi Famiglie e il Quellismo) a discapito della “detective-story” del primo libro e dell'“action-story” del secondo.

Insomma secondo me si è rilegato un po' troppo il personaggio in un contesto sociologico che sarebbe stato meglio affrontare in maniera più bassa per lasciare più spazio all'azione. In fondo stiamo leggendo un libro di fantascienza, non di sociologia e l'autore nei due precedenti infatti era riuscito a creare quel mix detto in precedenza che era perfetto.

Questo è l'unico appunto che mi sento di fare a questa storia, in quanto comunque l'ambientazione è fantastica come sempre, come anche tutti gli altri personaggi del libro.

Insomma non mi sento di andare oltre le tre stelline, in attesa (credo lunga in quanto l'autore si è dato al fantasy) di un quarto episodio.

Per gli amanti della fantascienza.