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    Woken Furies: A Takeshi Kovacs Novel
    Woken Furies: A Takeshi Kovacs Novel
    Woken Furies: A Takeshi Kovacs Novel
    Audiobook22 hours

    Woken Furies: A Takeshi Kovacs Novel

    Written by Richard K. Morgan

    Narrated by William Dufris

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Once a gang member, then a marine, then a galaxy-hopping Envoy trained to wreak slaughter and suppression across the stars, a bleeding, wounded Kovacs was chilling out in a New Hokkaido bar when some so-called holy men descended on a slim beauty with tangled, hyperwired hair. An act of quixotic chivalry later and Kovacs was in deep: mixed up with a woman with two names, many powers, and one explosive history.

    In a world where the real and virtual are one and the same and the dead can come back to life, the damsel in distress may be none other than the infamous Quellcrist Falconer, the vaporized symbol of a freedom now gone from Harlan's World. Kovacs can deal with the madness of AI. He can do his part in a battle against biomachines gone wild, search for a three-centuries-old missing weapons system, and live with a blood feud with the yakuza, and even with the betrayal of people he once trusted. But when his relationship with "the" Falconer brings him an enemy specially designed to destroy him, he knows it's time to be afraid.

    After all, the guy sent to kill him is himself: but younger, stronger, and straight out of hell.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateFeb 15, 2006
    ISBN9781400171996
    Woken Furies: A Takeshi Kovacs Novel

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    Reviews for Woken Furies

    4/5

    844 ratings31 reviews

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    • 1/5
      I'm really disappointed book 3 in this series has a new narrator. He's not "bad" but he's not good, and the previous narrator was really good. I want to Takashi to sound like how I think be should sound. The production value is VERY very low. Not sure if I'm going to be able to finish listening to this. I might need to read it.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Audio quality. Sounds like an echo or a speakerphone. Downloaded a perfect copy from the library. How can the scribd copy be so bad in terms of audio quality.
      The other books in the series don’t sound so awful.
      Is this a legitimate copy?

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      loved the ending.
    • 1/5
      Terrible audio quality, and less than stellar voice acting. What happened? First two books were great. Story feels like fan fiction. If you like the first two books just skip this.
    • 4/5
      Takeshi Kovacs is such a cool character, one tends to love him even when he seems somewhat unintelligible, or when he's a bit smug. The way Morgan writes it, Kovacs always seems to be fighting or fleeing for his life and the way he does it makes for a fun story. Enjoyed this one more than the 2nd installment of Kovacs' (_Broken Angels_), but _Altered Carbon_ still my favorite.
    • 3/5
      After decades wandering the universe, first as an Envoy and then as a killer/detective for hire, Kovacs has finally returned to his home planet. As the years go by, he's become increasingly aimless, until now all that still motivates him is vengeance. In the midst of his not particularly meaningful slaughter of a misogynistic religious cult, he falls in with a hard-as-nails civilian contractor. They haven't been traveling together long when he realizes that another personality is seeping through her cybernetic implants--a personality that thinks it's Quellcrist Falconer, the long-dead revolutionary hero.

      This is the most openly transhumanist book I've read in some time.
      review tbc
    • 3/5
      This is the third Takeshi Kovacs book Richard K. Morgan I’ve read, and the weakest by far. It’s very disjointed. The plot revolves around Kovacs taking a series of impulsive actions which make no sense given his character’s supposed sense of logic, intuition and self-preservation. He has long, ridiculous sex scenes with almost every female in the book. Lots of people always die in these books buts the carnage has never seemed so gratuitous before. I am only giving 3 stars for the originality and genius of Morgan’s vision of another world and of future technology.
    • 3/5
      Like his other books -- I liked it, but was all the sex really necessary?
    • 2/5
      Weakest of the three. Between the jumps in alliances as well as changes in location it was hard to keep straight what was going on. The twists weren't enjoyable because after a time you realize there's no way you could have predicted them because they come out of nowhere and then quickly disappear back into nowhere
    • 2/5
      Richard K. Morgan continues the worldbuilding he began in Altered Carbon, a futuristic world where death can be indefinitely postponed. Though it does not focus on the ramifications of this as much as the first novel, it feels more important than it did in Broken Angels. Woken Furies still doesn't quite capture the noir of Altered Carbon, though it isn't leaning heavily into action sci-fi like Broken Angels. The balance can be appreciated, but it doesn't always work. Kovacs begins with a revenge plot to kill followers of the New Revelation, an extremist religious group. Strangely, the normally composed Kovacs can barely contain his anger whenever one of them is around. After a certain point in the plot, this religion isn't mentioned again. The somewhat meandering plot is the novel's weakness. Kovac's hatred towards a religion seemed a bit out there for him. After sustaining an injury, he gets swept up in events that he has no stake in and goes along for the ride. The continues for most of the novel, and I'm always wondering why Kovacs put aside his (admittedly out of character) vendetta. The supporting characters gave some help here, but the initial group of deComs are gone just as you begin to care about them. The characters that come in later, all connected to Kovacs' past didn't get the same development. The final chapters were a bit rushed. After spending the second half of the book wondering if a ghost from the past is real, the alien technology of Harlan's World takes a weird twist. The orbitals that destroy anything that flies too high some how also preserve what they hit, including the personalities of those it kills. My reaction to this: "What?"This is a tough one, it does have some good action moments. The early group of supporting characters were fun, and the world felt lived in. Unfortunately, the overall plot couldn't hold it together.
    • 4/5
      It's funny, I finished this yesterday, and yet, today, I've been sitting here for ten minutes trying to decided on a score for this novel. And I still am. Decided to write out the review first, then decide on how many stars.

      The positives are many. Morgan is a master at world and tech building, and this novel is no different. The tech is fascinating, and I frequently had the thought that Morgan is the logical successor to William Gibson when it comes to building a technologically advanced society and running down all the ramifications of the tech.

      Also, I do enjoy Morgan's characters, especially when he's bringing in characters from Kovacs' past.

      And finally, the story as a whole works.

      On the down side, we are once again treated to Morgan's requisite two fully overly-explicit sex scenes. Honestly, I'm wondering if I went back to the previous two books and checked where the two sex scenes in each occurred, I'd be willing to bet they happened at similar page counts in both. I'm not a prude by any means, but three books in, it feels a little formulaic.

      Also, while the story as a whole works, as stated above, there were times where it did seem to unnecessarily complex. And I also simply couldn't buy into a global security network that blasts things out of the sky as also a data collection system. Makes no sense to me whatsoever.

      Other than that, as a whole, I have to compliment Morgan on not writing the same novel each time. He took some risks and, most of the time they paid off.

      One final note. The audio production on this novel was terrible. The reader was great, but whoever's decision it was to throw a pile of reverb on any sequence that occurred in the past was terrible. And there were just random decisions to treat the voice with other effects that served no purpose other than to annoy.

      And the fact that the reader continually referred to the protagonist as Takeshi Kov-ACKS, instead of Kov-ACH was quite annoying, after all the work Morgan put into the proper pronunciation in the first novel.
    • 5/5
      This review is also on Woken Furies (#2 and #3 in the Altered Carbon series)

      First I read Altered Carbon and was so touched by it that I then read the other two in the series: Broken Angels and Woken Furies.

      So during the day I am tooling around the Baltic: Russia, Finland, Sweden, then Germany. I am soaking up all this stuff from the past, most of it brilliant. By night, however, I am soaking up all this stuff from the future, all of it brilliant.

      The main protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, like all good mass murdering heroes, has some moral dilemmas about what he does for a living. The good thing about sci-fi is that it doesn’t get its head stuck up its arse Moral dilemmas are dealt with in a very pragmatic fashion that usually involves someone dying, sometimes the wrong person.

      This is not the thinking person’s sci-fi, it is more the feeling person’s sci-fi. I am assuming in writing this that you also like sci-fi and have the same snobbish pretensions that I do.

      One real stand out thing about this series is that it is racially blurring. Is Takeshi Kovacs black? or sometimes black? and sometimes Asian? or sometimes something else entirely? I ask that because it is not often in any book that the main protagonist is so very undefined that you cannot hang any racial stereotypes on his frame, benevolent or not. It remind me of something that I came across recently that said, “The body is only a garment, address the wearer not the cloak.” To all practical purposes it places the focus more directly on the character themselves and takes away any visualising you may (unconsciously) do to flesh them out. As a device I really liked it. Having said that, all the arseholes were quite clearly defined.

      I cannot think of another genre that has to ride so much stigma from so-called “book people” than sci-fi. I recently read The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, it is brilliant. I also read The Martian by Andy Weir it too, is brilliant.

      Both are fiction, but one requires reading things like The Guardian or The New York Times and the other takes imagination. No Bookers for guessing which is which.

      As an aside, a few years back I set myself the task of reading all the Booker winners. Man, apart from a few gems, most of them are like looking at your grandparents underwear.
    • 3/5
      Takeshi Kovacs is back on Harlan’s World and working on a path of revenge for the death of a friend. After crossing paths with the Yakuza he decides to hid out for a few months doing some mercenary work cleaning up the battlefield from 300 years ago that is still active due to weapons used. The book deals with the history of Harlan’s World and Quellcrist Falconer and due to resleeving and tech, 300 years isn’t that long ago. Takeshi isn’t the warm cuddly hero in this series but the story is good and the universe detailed and compelling. I would like to see more in this universe even if it isn’t with him as the main character.
    • 4/5
      Great read. A complex story finishing the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy. RM rmeshes numerous events and characters from a settled planet in a future that is terrifying in its meshing of technology w man. TK fights alingside and against interchangeable bodies and evolving bio-tech altered humans trying to salvage some human dignity.
    • 5/5
      I gave it a 5 and probably should have given it a 4, and only that if you like cyberpunk/military science fiction, but if you do, this is about as good as it gets.
    • 4/5
      Third book of the series. Hardcore version of Blade Runner with some revolutionaries, dl personalities, Martian tech, etc... thrown in. Definitely not light reading!
    • 4/5
      Ahhh... Morgan... been a long time since I have read your stuff. Was this as good as I remember the first two in the series being? No, not quite. It was just a bit too wordy (seriously, too many words) and there were just a couple too many side-track rants (i.e. women being oppressed by religion), though, to be fair, the women oppression thread did get pulled back into the story at the end, so... I like the tech and the premise, and the darkness of it. I think I follow the motivations of most of the characters and I suspect even Kovacs' copies would make sense if I could wrap my head around what it would be like, psychologically, to be re-packaged into different bodies over hundreds of years... what would that do to you, your personality, your desires??What did I not like about it? Maybe just too much description of a techy-world that was not really very enlightening as to character or plot, but did manage to show off how well Morgan thought through his world. Oh, and the gratuitous sex scenes.... yes, yes, we know you like to use the work cock in your writing and sex is the best way to fit that in, but... we don't really care... sorry...
    • 4/5
      This book is an exciting adventure story, set in an amazing sci-fi future, where everyone is immortal. Their bodies aren't immortal, though. See, every day, everyone's consciousness is uploaded to a central server. If someone's body dies, they're just uploaded to a new body, called a 'sleeve'.

      Of course, our hero, Takeshi Kovacs always ends up in a sexy, enhanced man-beast sleeve. With the biggest cock, the best muscles, and an enhanced sarcasm booster. Because, snark is what gets him laid, apparently. Not the hot bod, and the sexy muscles. It's definitely the snark.

      Sexy Kovacs picks up some hot slut at a bar, and soon joins her gang of mercenaries. But only after banging the shit out of her asshole, of course. Because Kovacs love the anal. And ass to mouth, as you do. Because porn is what sells books.

      They do some merc jobs. Steal some stuff, kill shit-tons of people. Then, Kovacs and his dirty slut run off on their own, because they're being chased by some other filthy mercs. They're being chased by none other than Kovacs himself. A younger version of him. Stronger, better, faster.

      Because, some jackass hacked the sleeve server and downloaded an earlier version of Kovacs to an even sexier hot man-beast sleeve. Then sent him off to go kill himself. After first fucking himself in the ass, hopefully. I mean, one can dream, right?

      In the process of fleeing his pursuers, the older Kovacs finds out that the dirty slut he's been humping is none other than a long thought dead religious leader. One that Kovacs happened to follow, back in the day.

      So, all this time, Kovacs has been banging God. Pounding God's asshole. Sticking his huge cock deep down God's gaping throat. Good times.
    • 3/5
      Takeshi Kovacs has never been very likable. He's as dark, angry, and vindictive throughout Woken Furies as ever before. He grows though. Don't get me wrong, he's still an asshole at the end of the book, but he's a different asshole.

      The plot is scattershot. As a reader I often didn't know what was going on any better than Takeshi did. I found my expectations frustrated throughout the story, though I was never completely lost. This story is unpredictable, messy, and sprinkled with fine granular detail. However, all of the disparate elements are all gathered together and tied up at the end. Even a few hours after I finished the book I still feel a vague manic unease about it. Intellectually, I'm happy with the conclusion. Emotionally? I'm unsettled.
    • 5/5
      Best of the three in this fantastic series.
    • 4/5
      The politics come to the fore eventually in what looks like the last novel in this series. Again, Morgan blends thriller. science fiction and mystery elements into an action-packed story with political punch.
    • 2/5
      Somewhat disappointing, left many hanging plot devices and a bit fragmented.
    • 4/5
      Finally, in this book, I got to enjoy Takeshi Kovacs involved in a plot that incorporates elements of his past that are only hinted at in earlier novels, which makes the story part of an actual event of change in his life, where the other books featured "side jobs" so to speak. Woken Furies takes place on his home world and features the presence of Quellcrist Falconer, the revolutionary figurehead of centuries ago, when Takeshi was much younger. There is a cool plot where the powerful founding family of Harlan's world sleeve a former version of himself to kill him. We get closure on the anticlimactic precursor that was Broken Angels, and we get to see Takeshi go from purposeless man of vengeance to a redeemed man, part of a bigger plot. This was my favorite of the novels and it had a very satisfactory ending where a lot of interesting things tied together in an unpredictable way.
    • 3/5
      If you're in the mood for roughneck, old-school detective novel mixed with sci-fi then look no further. Richard Morgan makes Takeshi Kovacs into the Bruce Willis (Die Hard) of the future age.
    • 5/5
      Pretty Strong Stuff. It's a shame that there won't be another Takeshi Kovacs book :(
    • 4/5
      I love Tak, I love his futuristic worlds and the entire wild ride, every time. Have to get a Takeshi Kovacs fix every once in awhile....
    • 4/5
      In this book Takeshi Kovacs returns back to his homeplanet and has to face two terrifying thing. Quellcrest Falconer, a familiar revolutionist from the past ... and himself.P.S. Enjoyed the hungarian references... :-)))
    • 3/5
      Woken Furies is the third instalment in the Takeshi Kovacs series. In this one, Takeshi returns to his home world, Harlan's World, to wreak havoc.The book starts very well, almost in media res. The reader is taken on a fast-paced journey through Harlan's World and its current state of affairs with Kovacs, who seems to be as much a passenger on the trip as the reader. He joins a group of mercenaries that fights against robots left over from a war long past. This part of the book has interesting characters, fast violence and well-written sex - the trademarks of the Kovacs series.After the jaunt with the mercenaries follow meandering descriptions of the history of the world, Takeshi's travels all over the place with close to no goal, and frustration by the reader as Kovacs becomes more and more an idiot that one does not want to know any closer.At the end the pace again picks up, and the book closes well. The threads are brought together interestingly, even though somewhat abruptly. I would very much like to read more about the martians and the aftermath of this book - perhaps through someone else's eyes...Not as good as the first book, but an ok read.
    • 4/5
      Takeshi Kovacs is back on his home planet of Harlan's World, and he seems to have some people mad at him-- angry enough that he finds it expedient to skip town and go out with a group that hunts rogue war machines left over from the planet's last civil war. His life is complicated by pursuit by a formidable opponent: a backup of himself taken from more than a century ago, when he was considerably more ruthless and unsubtle. And if that weren't enough trouble, he seems to have found a rallying point for the planet's previous revolution to start up again.Morgan delivers a harsh critique of both entrenched power and the revolutionaries that oppose them, examining the high costs paid by those who value power over people.
    • 5/5
      Wow! This is an amazing book and the best of the series. Morgan has matured as a writer and Takeshi has become more than just a one-dimensional, cardboard, super hero character who is all flash, violence and sex. I know it annoys many who want the same thing (Altered Carbon) repeated endlessly.SPOILERS AHEAD !In this book Takeshi goes home to Harlan's World. It is set about 100 years after the first book. He is working on a personal vendetta against a repressive religious sect whom he blames for the death of and stack loss of the woman he loved in the first book, Sara. He becomes accidentally sucked into a sale/crime/political deal that involves deComs, the Yakuza and the ruling Harlan family. When it all goes wrong he hides out with the deComs, bringing them the expected death and disaster.deComs are basically poor outcasts that band together in teams and with weapons, computers, and bio-engineering comb through the empty wasteland of one of the islands on the planet where the last war took place. There are all kinds of smart machines and smart weapons that have been left without humans and have developed their own cultures and ideas and are harmful to human life. The deComs are sent out to kill/destroy/clear them. They are paid for their kills and use the money to refine their weapons and their bodies. They take in Takeshi without knowing who he is, or about his Envoy past.Violence and plots ensue and through it all Takeshi has to start facing who he is and how he got to this point in his life. He has to look at the rage he has for Sara's killers and what it might be covering. An interesting method to achieve this is the use of a younger, illegal copy of himself that the Harlan's have re-sleeved and sent after him. The Takeshi in this book seems to be older and losing it a bit, though his body is young, strong, and combat modified (though an older model). He is missing clues and he is not hearing or seeing things that should warn him the shit is about to hit the fan. The overall impression is of a man who has lost his mooring in life and is tired of going through the motions, but has no other ideas or options. There is still snark, sex, and violence but it is not the main feature of this book. Takeshi comes across as a real person, and he comes up against the real life current people of the memories he has of them in the past, and in his head. He has to re-evaluate his beliefs, griefs, and the rage that fuels him to act in set ways, often without thought.Along the way we get to see more of the future that Morgan has created. We see the deComs, the Haiduci criminals, a surfer community, the swamps, sea, weather and abandoned land of Harlan's World. We also meet more Envoys. The aliens/Martians and their abandoned technology also come into it, and does the supposedly long Real Dead revolutionary Quellcrist Falconer. There are several buried surprises in the plot and an ending that seems to be hopeful, though not all tied up in a bow.Morgan has said on his web site that he won't ever write Altered Carbon again, and I hope that means he won't be writing a repeat of the same type of book, not that he has finished with Takeshi and the future he is set in. I would still love to read about an older/wiser Takeshi, and more about his world and the aliens/Martians.