Customer Reviews

Thirteen

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(20)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I'm having a hard time coalescing my thoughts on this one. On the one hand, my first thought midway through the book was that someone ought to get on the job of making "13" tee shirts. On completing the book, I wanted to go get that tee shirt, wear it to the mall and stare down anyone who questioned me - just because. In fact, just as Fight Club spawned imitation clubs around the nation, I thought that there are still Thirteen personality types running about, and they might start to form informal networks to combat the influence of the Cudlips (as incongruous as that might sound). I conclude in some respects, the book is extremely compelling.

In other respects, although a huge fan of Mr. Morgan's earlier work (Altered Carbon is one for the ages) I think Market Forces was kind of a miss, and Thirteen, although a compelling read, didn't quite take it over the edge either. There were several stylistic problems - names too close to each other, different characters referenced by the same name - which didn't appear in his earlier works, and a lot of the promised and implied consideration of race, gender, identity and even species didn't seem fully developed. A lot of the characters have seemingly identical experiences (illegal pregnancy - with a child of a Thirteen; waking up early on the Mars flight) but whether this was deliberate or intended to draw comparisons or contrasts seemed unresolved. Marsalis could have been Kovacs' spiritual great-great grandfather when it comes to choices of weapons and problem-solving techniques, but given those tendencies, the plot developments seemed predictable. There is still an interesting murder-mystery underlying everything, but since the protagonist's approach to investigation is reminiscent of a pinball smacking into various bumpers and being flung about, there is little subtlety.

On balance, Thirteen is worth reading and it will leave you with a bit to think about at the end. I'd recommend it for anyone who hasn't read Altered Carbon already as a sort of primer, but it's a slight step down, hence one star less.

First I have to give credit to writer Richard K. Morgan for his latest novel THIRTEEN; Morgan's latest novel is an ambitious affair tackling a lot of major themes with some of his most complex characters to date. Morgan's latest is very good a lot of the time but some of the subplots don't gel and actually slow down the main narrative without adding much substance to it. Even if THIRTEEN isn't a perfect novel, it demonstrates that Morgan's skills as a writer are continuing to grow.

A summary of the plot follows:

When a shuttle between Mars and Earth crash lands in the Pacific Ocean with body partsfrom the passengers strewn throughout the ship, COLONY Executives Sevgi Eretkin and senior partner Tom Norton are called in to investigate and find out which passenger woke up prematurely, used the autosurgeon to cut up and eat all the sleeping passengers. They discover that a Thirteen a genetically enhanced soldier that had been banished to Mars (or to a resettlement area)after they were no longer useful and deemed a threat was behind the murders eating the crew because his sleeping chamber opened prematurely. Now he is on a killing spree and they aren't sure why.

They partner up with Carl Marsalis another Thirteen who makes a living hunting other Thirteens and either bringing them in for resettlement or killing them. Seen as a traitor to his own kind and never accepted by humanity, Marsalis is a bruised outcast who tries to do the right thing while surviving in a world where he's not welcome. When it comes to light that the escaped Thirteen Alan Merrin had help in escaping and that he's part of a far larger plan, Marsalis and Ertekin feel compelled to track him down and find out the larger truth behind his escape.

End of summary:

At over 500 pages Morgan attempts to create a character as compelling as his protagonist Takeshi Kovacs the anti-hero of three of Morgan's five novels. While Carl Marsalis is, indeed, an interesting character equally as flawed as Kovacs, the story that Morgan has here careens out of control at time. The convoluted story takes a little too long to get going and once it does the shifting from one subplot to another isn't as smooth as some of his other novels. Morgan's world here is just as brutal and uncompromising as the world(s)that Kovacs inhabits with its noirish touches. The mystery at the heart of the novel just isn't quite as compelling and the plot strands don't hold together quite as well as his previous books.

THIRTEEN is still an enjoyable novel and worthwhile for those patient enough to follow Morgan's ambitious novel to its conclusion. The main drawback to the novel is that Morgan's many supporting characters aren't quite as compelling as his anti-hero Marsalis and we spent too much time with them. THI1RTE3N is a flawed but very good book that Morgan fans will enjoy. I'd suggest ALTERED CARBON or BROKEN ANGELS as a first read before this. I continue to look forward to Morgan's other efforts. Once he's able to create a cohesive novel with the power of his Kovacs novels (particularly BROKEN ANGELS the best of the series)and with as many plot strands as this novel, we'll be in for a rare, rich treat.

The only thing spellbinding about this book was that someone reviewed it as "spellbinding". Someone at the bindery must have accidently put the wrong cover on a Takeshi Kovacs novel for the reviewer.

To begin with the book is only a fair read. Some action, some sci-fi, nothing groundbreaking. I read it through, only finishing because I came three quarters through when it stalls out hopelessly. I am a fan of Morgan's earlier Kovacs novels. If you like those books then you will quickly realize that the tone is pretty similar minus the sleeving technology. The book goes off the rails when he starts painting the future in pretty simplistic political terms. Jesusland.. Really? The concept of the THIRTEEN is a good one but somewhere in the middle of the book there is a full blown seminar on Anthropological societal development that sounds like he wrote it right out of his research notebook when he got off the phone with whatever college professor he uses. Then there's Peru... The author must have wanted to vacation somewhere and write it off as work expense. The whole book is weak on plot. All the female characters are interchangeable. Same personality, same dialog just paper cut outs. BUT BY FAR the most unforgivable aspect is the main character is english... Say it with me English. Yet he is written with no location specific speech, vernacular cadence... nothing. He makes no real English references, has no cultural differences whatsoever. Of course none of the characters have except the ignorant southerners.

The Takeshi novels were great. Kovacs' predisposition to violence accompanied by somber soul-searching was fun. The trilogy raised interesting philosophical issues to ponder while delivering a quick-paced, bizarre, and engaging plot.

Th1rte3n does not do this. Sadly, Thirteen, like it's l33t-speak title, seems content to mindlessly chant those well-worn cliches that we've already grown tired of. The reader is pounded with paragraph after paragraph describing items and places unrelated to the plot, and filling us in on the background for how tragically stereotypical the future will turn out to be.

The book appears at times to try to weave Market Forces and Kovacs references together in an attempt to please all audiences. But, just like the cameo appearances of actors in sequels, the effect is more cloying than creative.

Morgan is a great writer. I expected better.

Like many authors with first time block busters, Morgan has been trying to recapture the glory of that first work. Sadly, there has been a steady devolution in quality as more and more political, economic and religious ideas and sharp opinions are introduced until finally, in THIRTEEN, they add such weight that the story sinks. Who can forget the incredible ALTERED CARBON or wonderful BROKEN ANGELS? Things start going down with WOKEN FURIES, then more with the preachy MARKET FORCES and now, the nadir, THIRTEEN, a thinly disguised morality tale about modern politics, race and mind altering drugs as a societal need.

It's the 23rd century but some part of the country (and the book) are stuck in the 20th with a vengeance. Racism rages (red state folks use the "n" word casually, those "GD Republicans" the author proclaims). The nation has split into Jesusland aka The Republic (red states), the Union (Northeast) and the Rim (West coast). Jesusland, allegedly religious zealots, act like the Rim folks - cursing, drug use, hatred, fornication. The "Christian" aspect ex exemplified in preposterous dialogue circa the 1920's Bible Belt. Muslims, by the way, have become moderates who also curse and screw. On top of that they are now female friendly unlike those terrible creatures in Jesusland.

Back to the story. Marsalis, a Martian thirteen (artificially enhanced fighting machine/person) is offered a release from a Jesusland prison to find a fellow rogue Thirteen who has embarked on a murderous rampage. The writing is rough, edgy, gritty and hard but after a while one begins to suspect that it is all for show, without meaning. Edginess for the sake of Edginess. Morgan is, if anything, consisten in his vision of the future. It is a horrible, Orwellian place with humans racing around on drugs doing, doing, doing. People do little more than drift from one artificial high to another, escaping the daily grind through behavior and brain modification. What's missing from all these books is any depiction of human happiness, satisfaction or pleasure beyond that gotten by sadism or violence. Looking for Love? Get serious. One can understand the fears of the Luddites among us - this is the ultimate worst nightmare, a faceless, cruel and savage world of technological progress and human misery.

One can help but notice that the action in the book seems forced as the author tries to impose what could have been a fairly good action plot onto a totally unrealistic and even silly social scene in order to make a political statement. There is an attempt at addressing issues like race and religion and natural vs augmented humanity but he does so with all the finesse of a sledge hammer. My grade: C-.

This is one of those books that gets a lukewarm reaction afterward, but it's hard to pin down exactly why.

The author has to imagine a different future, and he does. He traces out some of the consequences reasonably well, but there's a residue of irritation where you can see his own politics getting in the way.

It's unfair to complain that the main character was "cartoonish," as the premise is stated right up front that we're dealing with someone with a very different and much simpler/less range emtional makeup. Morgan's challenge is to make him less of a cartoon, which he does, but this still means the other characters have to carry more of the freight. They don't quite rise to it.

The book is a mystery, and the ending is something of a surprise flip, but it's hard to see how most people could have figured it out. Life works like that, sometimes, but having it handed on a plate is a bit less satisfying.

Etcetera. Each component underperforms slightly, and the drag effect is cumulative.

In "Thirteen" acclaimed young British science fiction writer Richard K. Morgan has written one of the finest novels published not only this year, but among the best in recent memory in the realm of science fiction literature. Best known for his cyberpunk space operas devoted to his antihero Takeshi Kovacs in the novels "Altered Carbon", "Broken Angels" and "Woken Furies", Morgan returns once more to explore the nature of individuality and what it truly means to be human in his latest novel, adding to its spellbinding, compelling mix, a heavy dose of the gritty realism seen in his recent novel "Market Forces". Stylistically, Morgan's novel is his closest to those of William Gibson's early "Cyberspace" trilogy, and that is indeed high praise from me, since I have noted before Morgan's frequent expropriation of classic cyberpunk themes in his fiction, but also wondering whether he has used them effectively. In "Thirteen" he has most certainly breathed new life into "post-cyberpunk" literature, in a compelling tale that's as memorable as "Neuromancer" and "Count Zero" - Gibson's first two novels, which are still regarded as among the founding father of cyberpunk's very best. Furthermore he has crafted an antihero whom I regard as far more memorable than Takeshi Kovacs, Carl Marsalis, a soldier of fortune and bounty hunter who belongs to a unique, genetically-modified strain of humanity known as Thirteens. And, best of all, Morgan has written some of best realized, most vivid, descriptive prose, which demonstrates that he is truly a literary talent to be compared favorably alongside fellow British science fiction writer China Mieville, perhaps the finest science fiction writer currently working in Great Britain.

Morgan's "Thirteen" can be viewed as a classic crime noir novel in a futuristic setting, a fast-paced piece of detective fiction in which Marsalis and his partner, Sevgi Ertekin, a young Turkish-American ex-NYPD detective, are hot on the trail of another Thirteen - a genetic variant of humanity designed to become the ultimate warrior - who has escaped from the Pacific Ocean crash landing of an Earth-bound shuttle from Mars, causing wanton death and destruction in his wake. Soon, however, both Marsalis and Ertekin stumble upon a tangled, almost Byzantine, web of political and criminal intrigue that spans the Americas and distant Mars too. Morgan expertly handles the suspense, and then, unexpectedly, introduces new elements of the tale nearly midway through the novel, as though they are billiard balls spinning out of control on a pool table. Marsalis proves he's an excellent detective, as well as bounty hunter, in his own right, tracing fragile leads across North America and the Andes of South America, that will lead inexorably to one final bloody showdown between a Peruvian crime lord and his half-brother, another Thirteen. Along the way Marsalis will question not only his own relationship with Sevgi, but also his sanity, as his obsessive pursuit of the murderous Thirteen from Mars will take him to Turkey, as well as a few memorably violent visits to Peru (Readers familiar with Morgan's literary riffs emphasizing violence and gore may find the body count quite diminished, until the final hundred pages.). I found "Thirteen" impossible to put down, and a compelling piece of science fiction literature that should earn for Morgan not only ample critical and popular acclaim, but also, many of the finest prizes awarded to science fiction literature.

Dystopian Sci-fi meets Political Commentary in the park. They hit it off and begin wandering the halls of art gallery violence, conflicted romance, and strangely action hero-esque main characters. Central characters rail against the perceived parameters of their culture, whilst simultaneously supporting them with their actions, providing an almost too real version of the near future.

Okay, this is a much bleaker book than his other novels, but so what? It's well written, has a great set of characters, and most importantly of all, it makes you want to keep on turning the pages.

This is a science fiction novel that will stand the test of time and in 50 years' time will be being mentioned in the same breath as works by Heinlein and Clarke as classics.

I like Richard Morgan's hard bitten, technology heavy style, though I don't think this book (which was released as 'Black Man' in the UK. Sad that a hard core SF author goes PC for his US readers) has the same cohesion in its social commentary as his earlier 'Market Forces'.

The plot is straighforward enough. An apparent bad guy, Carl Marsalis, reluctantly hunts an altogeher much badder guy. During the process our somewhat hero haltingly reveals that he's not such a bad guy after all, just sadly misunderstood. The theme is familiar (does a guy called Rick Deckard from Philip K. Dick's 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' sound familiar) because it's a theme Morgan explores well in his Takeshi Kovacs novels.

There's loads of plot detail of course; with over 500 pages to fill there is going to need to be. Some of that detail is filler - perhaps stage setting for a future Marsalis novel? - but overall it does not come across as a bloated book.

Bottom line is that if you like your sci-fi loaded with state of the art weapons, fights aplenty, technological extrapolations , drugs, sex and lots of characters dying, Morgan is not going to let you down. If you are looking for something more mellow with depth in the social engineering, go read a recent Iain M Banks novel such as 'Matter'.