Thirteen

I take great exception to the negative reviews of Morgan's latest gonzo thriller. Once again, he has given us an incredible but vivid heroic super warrior with a humanizing streak of honor and compassion, striding purposefully through a sadly decaying future world reasonably predictable from current societal deficiencies. The plot is suspenseful with all the bloody realism any fan of ultimate fighting could hope for, the sex scenes sufficiently graphic to more than titillate. Except for the stretched creation of elevators soaring above the atmosphere, the future technologies described seem seriously achievable, but never proliferate to anything close to tecnobabble. The key genetic manipulation of humankind is current events written large. If anything, this tale is even better than the Takeshi Kovacs yarns, and equal to Market Forces.

A good procedural novel from Richard K. Morgan, but there's just a hundred to a hundred fifty extra pages that makes this tedious, mostly because his characters discuss matters over and over and over again. We get the picture the first few times the same points are repeated. Morgan could have had another Altered Carbon style masterpiece on his hands if his editor had actually edited this book. I almost never skim through books, but this one had me rolling my eyes in frustration and skimming right on ahead, and I wound up at the end with all the information and intended impact. I did the editing myself, and that made it much more enjoyable.

Carl Marsalis is a Thirteen or in negative street vernacular a "twist". Thirteens are genetically manipulated to be sort of a Super-Alpha male, a "throw back" to an earlier time. They are faster and stronger with better immunity, but more importantly, a thirteen is hyper aggressive. They were designed and trained to be the soldiers of the future, but such is not the case when it's discovered that Thirteens are difficult to control and lousy at taking orders the program is scrapped. Thirteens are deemed too dangerous to simply allow to live and breed, so they are locked in concentration camps or "allowed" the option of living on a terraformed Mars colony. Marsalis is a bounty hunter that hunts down other renegade thirteens; viewed as a sell out and traitor by Thirteens and feared by "normal" people, Marsalis has a tough job and friendship is at a premium. The job is soon to become tougher as a Thirteen assassin has escaped Mars and is killing (seemingly) random citizens. Marsalis is put on the case.

Richard Morgan's "Thirteen" (in the U.K. "Black Man") attempts (successfully in my opinion) to tackle some big questions: What does it mean to be human and who belongs to "our" tribe? What do we do when we create something that we cannot control? What happens when the U.S. becomes so politically polarized that "red" and "Blue" states cannot coexist? All of these questions are inserted quite handily into a novel that is equal parts scifi and action/adventure with smatterings of international espionage and organized crime.

In Morgan's vision the modern world has become extreme. The United States have balkanized due to extreme political ideologies with "Jesusland" (basically the new south) becoming the home of Christian religious fanatics. Morgan's view of American Right wingers is grim (but sadly in some cases, true). Though these Jesusland characters are a bit cartoonish, the idea that the U.S. might experience another civil war between Confederate and Federal forces is not too far out there, especially considering the polarizing effects of the last couple elections.

This world is on one hand different than ours, but on the other frighteningly similar. In my opinion Morgans latest novel is his best and tackles some big issues. Like all Richard Morgan novels there is plenty of violence and sex and Morgan is a master of filthy linquistics, taking the "f-word" through just about every verbal contortion imaginable.

If you're not afraid of some pretty graphic language and violence you will love Thirteen. I did.

Thirteen is a very enjoyable novel. Perhaps not quite as "noir-ish" as Morgans Takeshi Kovacs novels. Like Kovacs, the protagonist of this novel, Marsalis, is somewhat more than human (this time because of his genes and not just his training, although he also has had special training). An ambitious novel that at its root gets the reader to assess the whole "nature vs. nurture" question. Although the premise seems to be that genes/nature is of greater importance, I think the story actually makes the case that the issue is more ambiguous. Like the Kovacs novels the story has a number of surprising twists. For whatever reason, for the most part I liked the Kovacs novels better, but this was still well worth reading.

I've read Altered Carbon, and while I enjoyed it, it wasn't so good that
I immediately wanted to read the sequels. Somewhat later I read Market
Forces, while it strained credulity, it was a really fun read... Mad
Max meets Wall Street, LOL. I can't wait to see the movie they will
eventually make of that :)

Thirteen had some interesting topics so I decided to get it in hardback,
and all I can say is WOW, best sf/cyberpunk read I've had in some time.
The book is sort of a cross between a crime/detective drama and something
like Predator and maybe even a little of a Spy Thriller.

Bloat? I guess if your attention span won't take over a couple
hundred pages you might say that, but I saw no fat in the plot,
in fact I was really sorry to turn that last page. This book
has the potential to be an awesome film, look forward to that.

More like this one please Richard :) and thanks for a great book.

Thirteen, by Richard K. Morgan, is an extremely well crafted novel about life in the near future. Humans have colonized Mars, though by all reports it's not a very pleasant place to live. Humans have also toyed with genetic alteration of themselves, producing several variants, one of which is the thirteen. By the time this book takes place, the variants have fallen out of favor. The thirteens, in particular, are considered dangerous, and are required to either live in camps or go to Mars. Many thirteens, who obviously dislike these options, try to live in secret. Enter the protagonist, Carl, a thirteen hired by a big, faceless government agency to track down the rogue thirteens and bring them in if possible. Against this backdrop is set a murder mystery on a grand scale. Enjoy.

This book is available in ebook format both for the Sony Reader and the the store Kindle.

I finished my latest seminar on Sunday, which meant that for the next two or so weeks, I'll be completely free from academic readings until it all starts up again. I used the first day of my new found freedom to get around to finally finish one of the books that I've been picking away at for the last month and a half, Thirteen, by Richard K. Morgan.

Morgan is one of the best Science Fiction writers of the decade, and has consistently churned out fantastic works. My favorite book of his thus far has been his debut novel, Altered Carbon. His latest, Thirteen (Or Black Man, if you're overseas), is an interesting, complicated and thought-provoking read.

Thirteen follows some of Morgan's style that has been seen in some of his other works - indeed, this novel could easily take place in Takeshi Kovac's world, just an earlier, more recognizable version. There are elements common to both - a tough main character bred to fight, Carls Marsalis, a vast conspiracy, some harsh violence and sex thrown in for good measure. This is science fiction grown out of an adolescence fantasy - it came into adulthood with plenty of problems and it's not for kids, that's for sure.

Thirteen follows Marsalis as he's recruited by an international governmental organization, COLIN, to track down a renegade killer who escaped from a crashing inter-solar space ship after killing and eating the crew, and while on the ground, is picking off people, seemingly at random. Marsalis is tasked with this because the investigators believe that the killer is the same type of person as Marsalis - a Variant Thirteen, a genetically modified human, bred to be the baseline human, with all of the aggression and resourcefulness as our ancestors might have been twenty-thousand years ago before agriculture tamed us. Along the course of the book, a massive governmental and corporate conspiracy is uncovered, with far-reaching implications for all of the characters.

This was a facinating, although somewhat dense read. Morgan's writing makes me slow down and take things in far more slowly, and I suspect that I'll be thinking about everything over the next couple of days just to finish processing it. Like his other books, this one is complicated, which makes it all the more satisfying to read - very seldom now do I come across good SciFi that really makes me sit back and think to put the pieces together - oftentimes, it's far more simplistic and clear cut.

One of the more interesting points of the book was the near-future that it portrayed - clearly a result of the last eight or so years of American politics. In this future, the United States has split into several parts, the Rim (West Coast), The Confederated Republic aka Jesusland (The South) and the northeast, all taken with regional stereotypes and expounded upon. Jesusland, incidentally, takes its name from an internet diagram of the US after President George Bush's reelection in 2004 of the South as its own country, with the United States as Canada. It's not an unreasonable assumption to make, and its certainly a grim prediction, taken to extremes.

The original title of the book, Black Man, is a big portion of the book's plot, dealing with discrimination on an entirely new level - one's genetics. In this world, even though there are fairly good levels of equality, the color of one's skin has fallen away to one's genetics, where variants are the ones who have a whole new level of discrimination - to the point where they're not allowed to breed, are killed or persecuted for who they are and generally have a miserable life because the rest of the population doesn't like them. It's a chilling topic, and an interesting one at a time when there is much change heralded around the country, where the recent election is seen as proof-positive (to some extent this might be true, but it's only a start) that racial equality has been archived.

This is science fiction at its best. While there are some of the other usual standbys here - artificial intelligence, space ships, colonies on Mars, these are merely details to the larger story that folds in numerous excellent characters, motivations and a story on top of that. Morgan has crafted a fantastic story here that doesn't rely on gimmicks or require the reader to suspend their disbelief in any extended fashion - the story here is not only believable, but terrifying in the fact that it is guided by a future that could be. It is for this reason that Morgan is one of this generation's finest writers, and Thirteen, while slightly overlong and at times, a little too similar to his other books, is a good example of his abilities as a storyteller.

(Originally Posted to my blog)

Let me preface this by saying that 'Thirteen' was the first work by Richard K. Morgan that I had ever read.

That being said, the only work by Morgan that I have not read is 'Market Forces'. I own all of his other books and have enjoyed them all.

Now, onto the review. I find 'Thirteen' to be a culmination of Morgan's scifi works. 'Altered Carbon' is very much a detective-noir type book. 'Broken Angels' is very much a war story. 'Woken Furies' is very much an antihero tale about a war-torn veteran trying to make sense of reality. 'Thirteen' was, to me, a successful culmination of these three elements. This book combines the previously mentioned aspects of his earlier works very adroitly. The book lacks some of the poignantly heart-wrenching, gut-churningness he channels in his earlier books, yet balances them in a way that outclasses any one of his previous works. Any one of the Takeshi Kovachs books is inferior in my opinion, yet as a whole they are superior to his later work in 'Thirteen'. Yet 'Thirteen' is a more holistic work than any of his earlier books if viewed alone.

In my opinion, this may make 'Thirteen' his culminating work so far. Who can tell if his fantasy series will be better. Certainly 'The Steel Remains' shows how much he has grown as an author, yet it is such a departure from his earlier works it is hard to compare it to the rest. Needless to say, I will anticipate his next works with great anticipation, yet if one were to read his earlier works first, one will gain an exponential appreciation for his newer books. I believe he has nowhere to go but up.

BUCK

Carl Marsalis is a variant Thirteen -- one of the genetically engineered subjects of a failed government/military program to create the deadliest of soldiers. He is now a hit man with a UN mandate to find and dispatch rogue Thirteens. The problem is that Carl has lost the will to kill. When a job takes a turn for the worse and he's arrested in Miami, Carl believes that he can now leave his troubled past behind him. Unbeknownst to him, what appears to be a mentally unstable Thirteen returns from Mars and crashes the ship he's on in the Pacific, only to reappear later and leave a trail of corpses in his wake for no apparent reason. Soon afterward, government officials show up to bail Carl out of jail. In exchange, they want his expertise to help them deal what those seemingly random murders. Unfortunately, it won't take long for him to realize that there is much more to this than meets the eye.

Morgan's writing style and his fine eye for details make the narrative leap off the pages. The author truly knows how to make the story come alive, and I found the imagery quite compelling.

The worldbuilding is interesting, though Morgan doesn't delve too much on how it all came to pass. The USA have imploded and the country has split into three separate States: the Pacific Rim, the North Atlantic Union, and the Republic, also known as Jesusland. China is now a superpower and the rest of the world appears hard-pressed to keep up with them. It is a fascinating backdrop, to be sure, and it's too bad Richard Morgan didn't spend a bit more time explaining how it all unfolded.

The characterizations are well-done, the dialogues gritty. The author knows how to keep the readers interested by allowing us to learn more about the characters by increments. The Carl Marsalis/Sevgi Ertekin tandem provides a nice balance between the Thirteen and the COLIN agent. The supporting cast is comprised of a good bunch of characters, including the Norton brothers and Carmen Ren.

The pace is great -- Black Man/Thirteen is a veritable page-turner! However, the storytelling is at times a bit uneven. Nothing that really takes anything away from the novel, mind you. But Morgan sometimes takes the "easy" route, and Marsalis' hunches prove to be on target, though they're coming from way out of left field. With such a absorbing and convoluted plot, I felt decidedly short-changed when that happened.

My only true complaint in what is an otherwise nearly flawless work of science fiction lies in Morgan's depiction of Jesusland.

Black Man/Thirteen is a high-octane, action-packed and violent book. It is also an intelligent and thought-provoking thriller, one that will even satisfy readers from outside the genre.

Like Ian McDonald's Brasyl, Morgan's latest is a sure nomination for a Hugo Award. Moreover, despite its flaws, Black Man/Thirteen might well be the book of the year!:-) I commend this one to your attention, as it is one of the books to read in 2007.

I start this review with fairly mixed feelings, and thinking this book deserves different ratings depending on how you look at it. A brief summary goes like this: Politics and religion aside I would have given the book 4 stars. Including the bigoted politics and religion I was going to give it a 3 star, until the ending. After reading the final few pages, the original 4-star dropped to a 3-star, and figuring in the soap box preaching dropped it to a 2-star review. I really tried to not let the political drivel taint the way I felt about the book, but it was just so repetitive and insistent I couldnt get completely past it. On the whole I did enjoy the book.

Ill start by review the literary aspect. While Morgan did give a unique spin (almost used the word "twist") and telling of this story, it does go beyond merely "borrowing heavily" from other works. It is almost an exact replicant.. er replica of Bladerunner. Much worse things have been said about a book, so I dont mean that in a bad way. Morgan did a pretty good job recreating the world and society in the future; broken up countries, redistributed power and wealth, lack of real war due to superpower governing bodies. I think I had a pretty good feel of the world he was trying to create, from the Altiplano, to Manhattan, to the Rim, even Mars (through proxy). His creation on technology that melds seamlessly into everyday life was very enjoyable to me. The story progressed well and had a good amount of mystery as Marsalis and Sevgi tried to hunt down Merrin. The little details I find annoying were that Morgan would take an exorbitant amount of time describing the initial scene of a chapter, and then as things started moving he would use less and less description on actual events taking place. This was minor, but I found myself skimming the opening paragraph or two in each chapter. The other issue I had was Morgans use of created terms he didnt define. Some terms he would let you wonder about for a few uses before explaining, some he never really explain. Or if he did explain, he did so late enough you didnt understand what was going on for quite some time, or his only explanation was when two people would argue over what "myths" were true about it. Two examples: The Haag gun, which fires basically a super fast acting AIDS bullet; and the "virilicide" which is never really explained other that it was used to artificially cull certain aspects out of human population. Whether it was truth or just conspiracy theory. Again, minor issues I could read past. What just killed me was the ending. It felt forced and contrived. Almost as if Morgan ran out of creative ideas and said "here ya go". After reading that his mother died while he was writing this, maybe that played into it, it kinda feels that way. I wont go into the details of the ending, but it was a let down. Also, this is neither complaint nor praise, just warning, there are a number of quite graphic sex scenes in the book. This is an adult book, so this is the place to put them if youre going to, just know its there if it bothers you.

Onto a more volatile subject: Morgans critique of religion and politics. It seems in other reviews both sides of this argument have stated their case poorly. Ill try to be as objective as I can in this. I am a Christian and "Right-Leaning" so you might as well call me a Republican. I am not racist. I am not stupid. I do no hate large groups of people. I do not live by fear. I am accepting of other people having different beliefs than I do. Morgan does not seem to think this is possible. After going through and reinventing the entire geo-political landscape of the world, renaming and re-quantifying every nation and group of people, he keeps "America" as a joke and a place to throw insults throughout the entire book. The hardworking west-coasters joined the Rim States, the hard thinking east-coasters created the Union, and every racist, idiot, hypocritical, inbred, lazy, Christian, Republican white man created the Confederate Republic of America, and its nicknamed "Jesusland". Jesusland is a byword in the book for anything that sucks "the food is bad, but at least youre not in Jesusland". He even says the country was created because everyone smart left, leaving only the people who have been trying to live by the racial fear and hatred of slavery (yes, the slavery that was ended in the civil war) to claim power and run the country as they see fit. He even writes its the "bible-thumping Neanderthals" that tore down American from what great country it was. If he wanted a hated group of people, he could have created one just like he created every other group of people in the book. But to try and disparage three groups of people he appears to hate, and definitely doesnt understand is bigotry plain and simple. Im not saying he doesnt have the right to write these things, just that it does no one any good to do so, and a disclaimer would have been nice.

So all in all the book (aside from politics) is a good 4-star read, until the end.. which falls far short of the rest of the book.

Like many many others, I loved Morgan's amazing debut, Altered Carbon, and have been waiting for something similarly exhilarating from him ever since. I liked the second and third Takeshi Kovacs books (Broken Angels and Woken Furies) well enough, but Market Forces was terrible (to be fair, it was written before all his other books and only published after the success of Altered Carbon). This fifth book (published in the UK under the title "Black Man") is neither particularly good, nor particularly bad, it's a bloated thriller filled with mostly familiar futuristic concepts, underwhelming social commentary, all undermined by a woefully undeveloped protagonist.

The story revolves around Carl Marsalis, a genetically engineered soldier (aka a "variant thirteen") who works for the UN as a freelance hit man/bounty hunter, seeking out "thirteens" who have gone rogue. (Shades of Blade Runner, Terminator 2, and Universal Soldier.) Alas, when a job in Peru goes wrong, he finds himself stuck in a Miami prison with no reprieve in sight. That is, until a seriously psycho thirteen somehow hijacks a transport from Mars, eats the crew, crashes into the Pacific and starts running amok on the west coast. The escalating body count leads the UN to spring Carl and team him up with a female Turkish-American investigator to track down the killer.

The book is essentially more of a crime novel or thriller with science fiction trappings, as the hunt for the killer leads across the former U.S. (now splintered into a Northeastern Union, the south-central "Jesusland", and the western Rim States), to South America, Europe, Turkey, and Mars. It's an incredibly convoluted chase, which is often driven forward by little more than Carl's inexplicable "hunches," which have a remarkable tendency for being correct (something a true crime novel would never rely upon). The story takes far too long to unfold, but with Carl never really getting developed as a character, it's hard to stay connected with what's going on. Morgan's prose is tough and tight, but there's about 200 pages too much of it.

A thriller set in one possible future. The potentials exist.
My favorite quote: "from the discomfort of truth there is only one refuge and that is ignorance. I do not need to be comfortable, and I will not take refuge. I demand to KNOW."
We should refuse to be comfortable.

While Morgan's previous work, the Takeshi Kovacs novels (Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies) explored the dehumanizing aspects of technology and the shattered remains they leave behind, this book takes a different path. In Thirteen/Black Man he uses the progression of technology to explore the base human desires and emotions that we all have, and turns them to 11. We must look into the mirror at our own inherent racism, sexism, propensity for violence and mortality.

He fleshes characters deeper than his other novels given more substance and form, inviting readers to emotionally invest in them. To this end, he has noted he has received some hate mail. The book... make you feel vulnerable, especially in one particular part which I will not reveal. Readers should be advised that this is *not* a Takeshi Kovacs novel... you are not along for the ride of an avenging angel, here you are a vouyer into the darker parts of humanity. However, I believe the work is more powerful for this. So few works these days ask us to think deeply, and I treasure the books like this one dare request us to.

A number of these comments seem to suggest that Thirteen is not as good as some of Morgan's earlier 'Kovacs' novels. I couldn't disagree more strongly. After Altered Carbon, Morgan's books (while still being great fun) became a bit too similar to each other for my taste. Until Thirteen. While still a bash-em-up action story, this took Morgan to a whole new (much deeper) level: social commentary which the reader can choose to ignore or to ponder at length. In Thirteen, I see Morgan asking questions about how society treats those who are different - and I see him playing with ideas about the human condition, about what makes us what we are (and what makes us do what we do). I think it's a more complex novel than his earlier work and all the more fascinating for that.

Thirteen is a good book that could have been better. The foundation is solid...Morgan's writing is eminently readable and the world of Thirteen draws you in. It's two biggest faults are:
Morgan isn't that interested in world building, which is a shame, because he's damn good at it. He fails to flesh out areas critical to his book like Chinese black labs. Instead, he has five pages of characters having an extended dialogue about the meaning of life...
The plot ties up too neatly in the end, too contrived.

This seemed like a lite version of Morgan's previous Takeshi Kovacs novels: same hero, less sci-fi. Accordingly, it's about one-third as enjoyable as those novels. I deducted an additional star because Morgan's love for using the f-word as an adjective has become intolerable. He seems to think the best way to show that a character is really serious is to emphasize his every statement with the f-word. I don't object to it as profanity; I object to it as repetition. It's effing tedious and it's effing boring. It's like listening to someone speak whose every fourth word is "like". It's like reading something written entirely in effing caps. Knock it off already for crissakes, Morgan.

Thirteen is a fast paced, thought provoking and (in my opinion) is a very enjoyable novel. It is different than the Takeshi Kovacs books, so an open mind is required on that part if that is what you are expecting. Morgan definitely isnt trying to rewrite anything he already wrote, which I think is great. He has excellent writing skills, and he puts them to full force here, with great action and plot twisting, and at some points it is just simply brilliant. Highly recommended.

In his fourth major novel Richard Morgan hits a new high in terms of narrative style. This is a bit like Altered Carbon in that it has a central, morally ambiguous character, involved in a thrilling sort of who-done-it adventure. At the same time the novel benefits from from witty dialogue, great futuristic imagination, and to a far greater extent than earlier novels, highly poetic scene settings and character descriptions. Comparisons with Raymond Chandler came to mind as I was reading this. 13 is not only a gripping, high adrenaline story but also beautifully crafted and written. I would love to know more about the author and how he manages to continue writing like this. Morgan has truly an exceptional talent which just better and better as he matures.

Not recommended

If you like fast-paced, hard sci-fi, you will not enjoy this. Way, waaay too much character development and far too little plot development. The violent passages are just lame. If you like chatty, introspective dialog, then you may find this book to your liking. It has a few interesting ideas none of which are very original to those who have read many S.F. books.

This story could have been edited down to a short story and published in "Analog".

Not his best work in my estimation.

In the future, genetic reengineering has enabled the government to use the tools to develop a series of human subclasses who only "live" to perform specific dangerous tasks. The norms are fascinated in a macabre way with these drones, but all humans fear the Thirteen, a pre-civilization creation known for its lethal aggression and kept under strict guard off planet.

However, a disaster strike when a Thirteen escapes its Martian exile and does what this sub-stratum is capable of: mass and serial murders. Bone marrow tired Thirteen bounty hunter Carl Marsalis is assigned to put an end to this killing machine although he quit being a government hit man. As he goes after his prey, Marsalis reflects how those who created him and his target made them what they are; yet these normals fear and distrust him as much as they do the Thirteen.

This is an action-packed complex High Noon science fiction novel but it also much more as Richard K. Morgan leaves his audience to ponder what makes a human and is bias a normal trait. Fascinatingly Marsalis as a created killer (of mostly Thirteen) is in some ways the most human of the cast as his Normal handlers see him and the other specialists as throwaway machines less than they are. He, on the other hand, commiserates with his prey as all he wants is stop killing even if it means life in a Miami prison. This thought provoking futuristic thriller will be on most short lists for sci fi book of the year.

Harriet Klausner

This book has it all. A fantastic mystery, great characters, a very very interesting view of our future, and terrific story telling. The way the author chose to fill in the characters biographies could be a bit off putting to some, but it kept me going because I had to know the "why" of their motivation.

I put this book in the same category as "The Power of the Dog". It's not the same genre, but the same kind of great story telling where patience is very much rewarded.

I enjoyed thirteen a lot. Morgan threw in some mystery and technology ideas that added spark to the building plot. There were surprises that kept me interested through the whole book. It was a little week on explaining some of the technology. I felt it would be a better story if he had delved into how thirteen genetic materials were acquired. And there is something called "mesh" that I was interested in but it was never explained. The graphic descriptions of crime scenes were a little too raw for my taste, so if you have a week stomach be prepared.

Very tedious listening. I listened to the audiobook--over 20 hours. This is the first time I have (read) anything by this author and it was all. talk. talk. talk. for hours on end, only broken up for a couple of gratuitous sex scenes. My mind kept wandering to Bladerunner for some reason.
[Spoiler alert]---[Spoiler alert---[Spoiler alert]---[Spoiler alert]
After the author killed off the only character I cared about 2/3rds of the way in, I kept thinking hurry up and be over with--hurry up--hurry up, and was not surprised by the anti-climactic ending after even more speeches. The narrator did a good job, but it is unlikely I will try another story by this author; life is too short.

I was really looking forward to this book, being a huge fan of Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs trilogy, which is some of the best fiction I've read in the last 10 years, sci-fi or otherwise. Unfortunately, while not as bad as Market Forces (Morgan's other non-Kovacs novel), Thirteen is nowhere near Morgan's best work. Full of well-worn cyberpunk plot points, uninteresting characters, and a amazing number of embarrassing, simplistic cliches (especially about middle America), this book reads like the work of a much lesser talent.

The Government has genetically engineered Carl to be a black man. As if this weren't bad enough, they also made him a Thirteen, which means he is always a little cranky. In combat, this extra crankiness is a huge advantage.
Carl tries his best not to be cranky, but everyone he meets goes on a forty-five page rant on how their lives are actually much worse than Carl's. If it is a woman, Carl has sex with her, but it only shuts her up for a paragraph or two before she is back to bitching.
Carl has a license to kill, but since he is the good guy he tries not to use it unless he is in a pinch. Mostly he opts to just disfigure and paralyze people so they can spend the rest of their lives regretting having crossed him.
In the future, from Indianapolis to Rio de Janeiro is about twenty minutes (though often flights are overbooked and Carl has to kill someone to get a seat), so Carl hops around the globe confronting old acquaintances demanding they confess everything about the interplanetary conspiracy or else. Carl disfigures and paralyzes them but still they always refuse to confess. No matter, because Carl learns more from what they don't say than what he would learn if they had confessed everything.
Eventually enough people refuse to confess for Carl to figure it all out. He confronts the interplanetary conspirators and gives them a chance to mend their ways, but they don't, which makes Carl extra cranky.

Fans of the Takeshi Kovacs series might be a little disappointed with Thirteen, but only because the Kovacs books set such a high standard. Thirteen drags a little in one or two places, then throws in a plot twist out of left field. At 500-plus pages, it's a little too long.

Having said that, it's still a worthwhile read for both Morgan diehards and those new to his work.

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-.

I've liked the authors previous books, but found myself disappointed with Thirteen. It dragged on for way too long and I found myself having to struggle to finish it. Not enough action, and the same conversations about being a "13" rehashed over and over again.

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.

Morgan fans be aware! This is his least interesting work. It is not in the league of Altered Carbon or Market Forces. The concept of the Thirteen is fascinating, but long stretches of flat dialogue and boring meditations make for a lack of the energy that is present in his earlier works.

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.

Having been a consumer of all Richard Morgan's previous works, this was a natural and I wasn't let down.

Although the character development didn't feel quite as elaborate or complete as the Takeshi Kovacs series, there was enough to keep me fully engaged and to evoke that emotional response indicative of excellent writing.

I would thoroughly recommend this book to Richard Morgan fans.

Why why why ? everything he's written uptil now has been amazing. The man knows how to create characters people like - i really enjoyed Woken Furies even though that was much less violent than the previous 2 novels. And Market Forces too was beautifully written - tight, terse, every word contributing to the climax.

But this book made me sad - so he's superhuman. So he's feared and hated by all. These are tried and true ideas and i regret to say the author brings absolutely **nothing** new to his treatment of them. Seriously, if you're like me and have read everything he's written, you'll buy this because it's by Richard Morgan. But this book has made me wonder if i should buy what he writes next - some dude suffering a lot of angst because he's different and people hate him - then he falls in love and takes revenge and learns something about people and accepts himself. Oh come on, it's like a freaking 70s feel good movie - and they did it better. It's very 2 dimensional after the depth of characterization of Woken Furies. A real step backwards for this author i am afraid.

What a thoroughly hateful character Carl Marsalis is. The main protagonist of the interminable shaggy dog of science fiction novel spends the entire novel fighting and killing. He is completely indomitable because he is a genetically engineered variant--strain 13, bred as the perfect killing machine. The authorities in the novel's bleak future world have banished all the 13s to Mars. They were smart to do this. They should have sent this book to Mars along with the mutants.

I was disappointed with Thirteen, after reading all of Morgans other books i thought this would be better. I never bought into the main characters personalities or overall story. I have a feeling that Morgan just needed to pump out something quickly to satisfy his publisher.

A number of these comments seem to suggest that Thirteen is not as good as some of Morgan's earlier 'Kovacs' novels. I couldn't disagree more strongly. After Altered Carbon, Morgan's books (while still being great fun) became a bit too similar to each other for my taste. Until Thirteen. While still a bash-em-up action story, this took Morgan to a whole new (much deeper) level: social commentary which the reader can choose to ignore or to ponder at length. In Thirteen, I see Morgan asking questions about how society treats those who are different - and I see him playing with ideas about the human condition, about what makes us what we are (and what makes us do what we do). I think it's a more complex novel than his earlier work and all the more fascinating for that.

1) Writing is erudite, but elitist and condescending.
2) Characters are transparent, predictable.
3) Language is repetitively vulgar.
4) Action is frequently sadistic.
5) Political and economic themes are presented in juvenile terms.
6) Length: someone get an editor, quick!

Other than that, it was a good read, with some good sex.

possible spoilers......
Having read with pleasure altered carbon,broken angels and woken furies, I had had high hopes for this novel.
The ultimate problem was that the lead character was thoroughly unlikeable and possessed the most cartoonish character of any anti-hero Morgan has created. The basic premise of the story also made virtually no sense whatsoever - genetically modified humans who have somehow had their social ability genes tweaked to return them genetically to our human hunter/gatherer
forebears - this based on Morgan's wild assumption that social group cohesion is somehow the feminization of the natural human males power hierarchy in true Chimpanzee fashion. This return to hunter/gatherer makes the genetic variants somehow more male, and you guessed it - more violent and deadly.
The variants refer to natural humans as cudlips - a mocking moniker for the 'natural' human, which is strange, when you recall it was the cudlips that created the variants to begin with. The book was great
in it's atmosphere and descriptive ability, but the anti-anti-hero, Carl Marsalis, kept reading like a
predictable cartoon figure that kept getting more cartoon-like as the book progressed, until at the end of the book the storytelling was getting so cliched that it was painful.
The concept of America breaking up into a Jesusland, Pacific Rim and a northeastern commonwealth was entertaining, if not politically naive. The writing is excellent and I will continue to buy Morgan's
books. Let's just hope he spends more time on developing realistic heroes and returns to his brilliant ability to create new concepts for the science fiction arena. He has done this superbly in his previous books.

My first impression was that the story was almost a complete rip-off (not merely an homage) of Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. My second impression was that the story was awfully dull for one that was filled with wall-to-wall sex and violence. The characters barely had time to speak, they were so busy fighting, fleeing, or fornicating, and yet I had to force myself to slog through the first hundred pages or so. I still don't know how the author managed to make sex and violence so boring.

It was only when I started to get a grasp on the interesting underlying concepts, which were either original or just new to me, that the sex and violence started to become compelling and meaningful. When I began to sort out who was dying and why they were dying, then the action propelled the story along. The author's comentary on evolution, and on how we tamper with it one way or the other, became a framework to hang the story on, and the action started to have a purpose. After all, our current state of evolution is built on an infinite progression of sex and death. Marsalis eventually becomes a memorable character, and I'm glad I struggled through the first hundred pages while the story came together.

This book should be branded with a warning: "Contains offensive, bigoted and hateful language and ideas".

The entire book seems to have been written simply as a vehicle to attack Christians and showcase the authors prejudice and ignorance towards Christians and Christianity.