booklog: Richard K. Morgan, The Steel Remains

[firecat]

The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan

This is supposed to be the first book of a trilogy.

Audiobook narrated by Simon Vance. He's a technically good narrator but I'm getting sick of how he overuses/misuses accents. In this book I'm just not convinced that nomads of the steppes should have cockney-esque accents.

Richard K. Morgan, prior to this novel, has written noir/cyberpunk; this is his first foray into sword & sorcery fantasy. I kind of think his writing style works better for cyberpunk. It's not that every fantasy has to be written in formal language, but the use of a term for sexual intercourse as punctuation (a feature of all Morgan's books) is kind of jarring in a fantasy book.

I like that the primary point-of-view character is gay in a society where homosexuality is illegal/shunned, because that makes the sexual politics more interesting. I like that the book explores some of the ways that war scars and changes people -- not just individuals, but whole populations. I like that there is a female point-of-view character who is a lesbian and a competent warrior, and who doesn't die in the end. (But Morgan doesn't let her have sex either, which is annoying.)

In the end I didn't care about these characters as much as I cared about Takeshi Kovacs, the hero of Morgan's cyberpunk trilogy. For most of the book the three main characters are not connected. I started caring a little more about them toward the end when they hooked up. But I don't feel compelled to continue to the next book in the trilogy the way I wanted to find out what would happen with Takeshi Kovacs.

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