Woken Furies

Richard Morgan brings his Kovacs trilogy to a close with Woken Furies, the final insight into the adventures of Takeshi Kovacs. Despite the slight possibility of hope offered by the ending of Broken Angels, Kovacs finds himself again operating on the wrong side of the law as a petty criminal. Back on his home planet of Harlan’s World, Kovacs has not led an easy life despite his financially rewarding exploits on Sanction IV. The anti-hero begins Woken Furies sleeved in a damaged synthetic body and we catch up with him midway through executing a harrowing personal vendetta.

I’d always assumed that Woken Furies would be the last of the Kovacs novels, and according to Morgan’s website, this is a book that should be ‘savoured as it goes down‘. It is the longest book of the three and I did my best to luxuriate in the story, instead of devouring the text at the rapid pace that Morgan’s writing style makes it so easy to do. I definitely did my best at savouring it, knowing that I’d have to go through the process of finding a new author to revere once I was done.

Occurring one-hundred years after the events of Altered Carbon, Kovacs is funding a murderous rampage against the New Revelation religious sect by selling the stacks of slaughtered priests to an old acquaintance. It’s hardly an economical living, but his quest for revenge is purely personal. During his attempt to acquire a new sleeve, he encounters and saves a girl, Sylvie, from being assaulted by religious zealots. In return for his help she offers him a place to stay alongside her mercenary colleagues. Despite the scarcity of land on Harlan’s World, an entire continent remains uninhabitable thanks to rampaging military machines left over from a conflict that ended many years ago. Sylvie and her mercenaries are commissioned to deactivate these robots by the government on Harlan’s world and Kovacs soon finds himself out in the dangerous Uncleared zone offering a helping hand.

During this excursion, Sylvie blacks out and reawakens as the long-dead, universally revered revolutionary leader, Quellcrist Falconer. Falconer’s quotes pervade all three of Morgan’s books, she is a much studied and controversial character, responsible for a previous uprising on Harlan’s World. By the time of her entrance, Kovacs already finds himself on the wrong side of the church, the yakuza and worst of all – the first family on Harlan’s World. Although fearless in the face of most would-be assassins, the Harlan’s have employed a much more able procurer of justice – A younger copy of Takeshi Kovacs himself.

After two stories of Kovacs slaughtering his way through peerless opposition, Woken Furies sees him pitted against an opponent who genuinely riles him – himself. Reading through the book you pick up on slight inferences that Kovacs might be losing some of his Envoy skills, or becoming rusty with his God-like powers. He questions whether he’ll be able to defeat his younger self and strives to be as unpredictable in his plans and movements as possible so as not to be tracked down. This genuine villain threat combined with the fact that this is the final book of the trilogy, adds an extra sense of foreboding to the reading experience.

Kovacs’ strained relationship with the apparent Quellcrist Falconer is another intriguing element of Woken Furies, given the stories and quotes of her that he has regurgitated throughout previous books. With his obvious contempt for authority figures and her desire to overthrow the ruling class on Harlan’s World, you would expect the violence obsessed ex-Envoy to have established a more friendly affiliation with the long dead revolutionist. Instead, Kovacs is more concerned with the Sylvie personality that has been overridden by Falconer.

The Harlan’s World setting also allows for some probing into Kovacs’ past in the sprawling cityscapes and we are exposed to a whole new world for Morgan to build. One peculiar quirk of Harlan’s World is the fact that centuries old Martian platforms orbit the planet and destroy anything that flies above a certain altitude. These ‘orbitals’ shape the persona of Harlan’s World, inciting an innate fear of heights in most of the population and were alluded to back in Altered Carbon. They are involved in an interesting plot twist toward the end of the book and contain a raw power that might just be enough to bring the omnipotent Harlan family to their knees.

As Kovacs’ last outing, the finale is particularly ambiguous, easily offering enough of a possibility for a fourth book to be written (however unlikely), but more importantly, enough for us to generate our own ideas of where the anti-hero goes from here. There were instances of sheer genius in Woken Furies that left me shaking my head in amazement, it makes me wonder just how easy Morgan must find it to write these stories. He is full of eyebrow-raising marvel and with all of these extra pages, he manages to cram more of it in. I guess it’s a sign of a great writer that I was tinged with sadness once I’d read the last page – not because of the story itself, but rather that I haven’t got anymore Kovacs to rabidly consume with my next read.

9/10

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Added by Grand Assault 5 months ago on 20 July 2009 06:59