Customer Reviews

Destroying Angel

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I spotted this book in the book store, and grabbed it because the cover looked interesting. I absolutly could not put it down. It is fast paced and the prose is excellent. I love Russo's sense of what the future could be. This is my favorite of his novels and I highly recommend it. I bought it in 1993, and have read it at least ten times. It is what I consider to be a nearly perfect novel.

Destroying Angel is a fun stroll through the deadly neon-lit concrete jungle of a sinister dark future of the 21st century. Scary and depressing while at the same time hopeful and thought-provoking. Realistic charaters and believable setting make this novel a must-read for fans of cyberpunk! WARNING: contains graphic violence, profanity, sadistic behavior, and nearly every psychopath, oddball, and misfit you will find in a real city! reader's discretion is advised.

The first novel of the Carlucci trilogy is less about Frank Carlucci than it is about retired officer Louis Tanner, but it shares the same locale, wild thrills, unexpected turns and taut writing. Russo creates a believable near-future, fully fleshed-out with characters who continue on through the rest of the trilogy. Carlucci is introduced and appears, but he plays only a "second banana" role. The story in this book sets up the remaining two novels, and if you read one you'll want to read all three of this excellent set. I only wish I'd been able to read them in proper order.

Let's hope this novel is back in print shortly and becomes easier to find. It deserves it!!!

The entirety of cyberpunk may qualify as a hidden gem, but Destroying Angel might be the best novel that the genre ever produced.

The award-winning Russo has a lot of great books to his name - Destroying Angel may be the best. Russo doesn't make the mistake of losing his story in the joy of world-building. Although his cyberpunk San Francisco is a gloriously grim setting, the book is about a man (Tanner), a mystery (a serial killer) and a theme (DOOM!).

For those that argue cyberpunk is "SF noir", this is valuable evidence to prove their case. It spawned two sequels, neither as good.

This is such a wonderful series of books. I picked them up at a used bookstore and I can't believe they are out of print. Working in a bookstore myself I read all the time, and these are some of the best novels I've read in a long time.

If you like detective fiction in your sci-fi, then Russo's book will certainly please. It has a gritty cyberpunk edge to it and paints a vivid if depressing picture of San Francisco in the future. For a similar but much more stylish work try William Gibson's _Virtual Light_.

A great novel, and a lot of fun. You have to read it

I'm surprised at all the gushing reviews. There's absolutely nothing special about this book, which bears some of the sadly typical flaws of much of the genre, including wooden characters and a plot that's going nowhere. A lot of the "action" revolves around the main character going out to eat, with poorly made coffee as an ongoing theme. If I had a dollar (quarters don't amount to much anymore) for each time one of the main characters utters the following lines--"I don't like it at all. But what the hell else are we going to do?"--I'd have enough to buy something more engaging. Also, while I realize this book was published in 1992, there's nothing to really warrant calling it a "cybershock thriller." It's not even thrilling. The only reason I'm sticking it out is because it's set in my hometown and at 230 pages it's short enough that the time I'm wasting is limited. I apologize to all the Russo fans, but I just couldn't deal with the unchallenged glowing reports. Maybe some of his other stuff is better. I can think of four books off the top of my head that I'd recommend instead: if you're into disaffected youth and futuristic urban decay try Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren. If you're looking for an "exotic" futuristic thriller, try Greg Alec Effinger's Gravity's End or David Mack's Kabuki. And if you want to read a more original suspense thriller set in San Francisco's Tenderloin, try The Magician's Tale by David Hunt.