A jaded bodyguard encounters conflict and double-crossing on colonised Mars in a satirical novel from the author of Altered Carbon
One of the sweetest utopian thrills of cyberpunk fiction has always been that it makes software upgrades exciting: a process that can magically grant the hero new powers to defeat the forces of evil, rather than just pointlessly move things around, if not break them. For some reason, Windows updates never quite deliver the same kick.
So it is for Hak Veil, the protagonist of this super-fluid action thriller set on a colonised Mars a few centuries from now. He has a military-grade AI system called Osiris living in his head, which can offer tactical advice, hack taxis and doors, and make sarcastic comments about his romantic liaisons. At a certain point his relationship with this secret sharer is surgically enhanced, and the reader inwardly cheers, because a lot of bad guys are now going to go down, and all that remains is to see how it happens.
The first-person narration is casual and coarse, as befits a former mercenary, yet imagistic and sensuously attuned
Related: Altered Carbon author Richard Morgan: 'There’s no limit to my capacity for violence'
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