Broken Angels

Why it’s on the list: Richard K. Morgan’s second Takeshi Kovacs novel trades the detective story for war and salvage: Kovacs assembles a team of specialists to claim a buried alien artefact in the middle of a corporate-backed colonial war — a book about who owns a discovery and who is expendable in retrieving it.

Where I heard about it

• The a16z infrastructure team — on the a16z Infra Reading List, in the A tier of its sci-fi section, under the Takeshi Kovacs series (second of three).

About this edition

It follows Altered Carbon but stands alone; the shared element is the world’s backup-and-resleeve mechanics, not the plot. The interesting thread is commercial — what a company will trade for exclusive access to a find.

Connections

• a16z Infra Reading List — the list this came from.
• Richard K. Morgan — the author.
• Altered Carbon — the first Kovacs novel.
• Woken Furies — the third.
• Science Fiction — the genre page.
• a16z — the firm whose infra team curates the list.