Richard Morgan - Market Forces

Four and a half stars. Highly recommended. Award-level stuff.

Market Forces is very different from Richard Morgan's first two books. It's set in the relatively near future (50 years or so), where vast corporations dominate the economic and social landscape, and executives duel each other for promotions in souped-up cars, on deserted and neglected motorways (cars and fuel being far too expensive for the vast majority of the population). Like Altered Carbon and Broken Angels, it's a very aggressive, testosterone-heavy story, but with the more familiar setting Morgan is free to riff on some more political themes. It's also much bleaker and cynical book than you would think. Given the number of shots at personal redemption Chris Faulkner, the main character, is given, you'd think he'd take at least one of them. But the book is much stronger for not choosing the happy ending and the easy way out. It makes a poweful emotional impact.