Market Forces

A dark satire. Where the protagonist is, most people live a poor, squalid existence. A few have occupations, like his girlfriend, the mechanic. Some are executives, such as himself. His company and field of expertise is investing in small conflicts and wars around the world. The catch is, for the ambitious, or even non-ambitious, is to get ahead, you have to survive Car Wars. These duels become somewhat of a spectator... Read Full Review

This novel is a departure from Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs universe that I've so enjoyed in the past, but it was a great read. Took me a bit to 'get into it' as I tried to figure out what this new world's rules are, but once I'd settled in, I found the ride interesting and compelling. Morgan finds a nice balance of trend-extrapolation and mayhem. I found the novel's anti-hero to be complicated and layered. Sometimes I identified... Read Full Review

Richard Morgan offers some of his best prose in this near future cyberpunk novel which may yet be regarded by some as a classic in the genre. However, I still think that Morgan isn't nearly as accomplished a literary stylist as China Mieville, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, or especially, William Gibson. But frankly, to his credit, Morgan has written yet another cinematic cyberpunk thriller with a captivating protagonist,... Read Full Review

100 pages into this 464 page bug killer I was ready to slam it. This book doesn't even deserve one star, I thought. How did I get from there to matching the highest rating I've given a book thus far? I finished it. The premise is an eye catcher: corporations rule the world, funding, starting and stopping wars based on economic prospects only, and the way you work your way up in the corporation is by performance and road raging... Read Full Review

Last year Richard Morgan won the Philip K. Dick award for his distant future opus on identity-crisis, "Altered Carbon." This year, "Market Forces" already has won a nomination for the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke award--a well deserved accolade. "Market Forces" is a brutal, turbo-charged thriller set in a not-too-distant future London. More than science fiction, it is a horror novel--the fear factor comes from the story's... Read Full Review