Ah, the second-album slump ! Altered Carbon was one of the most interesting stories I'd read in the last couple of years. So when I got my hands on a follow-up, I was expecting more of the same. Which I didn't get.

The plot of Broken Angels again involves Takeshi Kovacs, the anti-hero from Altered Carbon. He's on another planet, fighting a shitty war for some corporate interests, and looking for a way out. He finds it when he gets roped into a plan to steal some ancient Martian technology from the middle of the war zone. Much violence and mumbo-jumbo ensues.

The problem is this book is sequelitis. The author obviously tried to recreate whatever had worked in Altered Carbon, but falls short. So far short. By the end I was almost looking forward to the last page. There's all kinds of plot-twists and secret agendas and all the usual sequel-running-out-of-ideas stuff but nothing works. Even the bits where he tries to tie-in to Kovacs' background (which made the first book so intriguing) are muck. Well, not muck, just not any good. Which kind-of sums up the book to tell the truth.

Morgan's third novel "Market Forces" is on release. I'll probably buy it anyway just to see, but I hope for his sake that it's of a higher standard than Broken Angels.