Market Forces
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Market Forces description
Richard Morgan, the award-winning author of Altered Carbon and Broken Angels, strikes out into new territory with Market Forces, leaving behind the farflung battlegrounds of Takeshi Kovacs for the not-so-distant future of corporate Earth. Here, Morgan extrapolates a world where commodities trading reaches a brutal pitch and the outcomes of banana republic uprisings are the new market. Now, on the road to success, the brokers of the new economy compete for status and promotions via road rage on the freeways of new London. Morgan's conflicted protagonist, Chris Faulkner, is a comer known for one spectacular kill that shot him to the top of mid-range global capital firm. He parlays his reputation and skills as a driver into a job in the emerging field of "Conflict Investment" at the world's hottest and hardest firm. Soon he finds himself running with the big dogs and rises to the top of a brutal realm, but his ascent is quickly threatened by vicious senior partners, gold-digging suitors, fame, fair-weather friends, and his own nagging conscience. Market Forces is at once an anti-globalization treatise and anime fantasy meets The Road Warrior. Morgan employs the graphic-novel imagery of his two previous novels to create a disturbingly brutal picture of slash-and-burn capitalism run amok. There are times when Faulker's moral quandries seem hollow in the face of his actions but this isn't Crime and Punishment. Enjoy the ride and "come back with blood on your wheels or don't come back at all." --Jeremy Pugh Amazon.com Exclusive Content A Winning Translation: An Exclusive Essay by Richard Morgan
 His novels may paint a bleak picture of the future, but Richard Morgan has a great attitude toward language, and one word in particular. Read his Amazon.com exclusive essay and find out why he'll never consider himself, or anyone else, anything worse than an occasional non-winner. |
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Market Forces Customer Reviews
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The progressive line of duels from past to future
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Market Forces is a nicely written, well balanced book. I am continually impressed with Morgan's writing style and his ability to show what the characters are thinking, and his ability to keep the storyline together from beginning to end. The storyline itself is a futuristic look at what, historically, our past was, which is incorporated into a seemingly unbelievable, by today's standards, way of doing business.
Here is where I would like to address other reviewer's opinions that the plot is unbelievable. The main one being the use of violence to resolve issues and the second being the so called Challenge, or duel with cars in order to decide who gets what corporate contract, or as a means to move up in a company. Historically we have seen both sides. In Roman times warriors were pitted against each other in an arena. Granted, they are there, usually, against their will, but there were some who were there as "professional" gladiators, deriving their wealth and fame from the violent deaths of their foes at their hands. Move to Medieval times and you have several situations. One is to "throw down the gauntlet", or in other words issue a challenge to a king, queen or some other nobleman. The winner was redeemed and considered the true and correct person to whatever issue was at hand. Armies fought and it was thought that the winner was the chosen of god and thus the army that was in the "right". Criminals, or those accused, oftentimes went through Trial by Ordeal to see whether they were innocent or not. The most common ordeals were to take a red hot piece of metal and the accused wraps their hands around it. If they don't make a noise and can keep their hands on the flaming hot metal they were innocent. If they made a noise they were guilty and were executed. Or they would put them into a body of water and if they sank than they were innocent (with the downside being that they are now dead) and if they floated than they were considered guilty and thus executed. Move forward to Revolutionary times and you have duels, most notably that between Burr and Hamilton, which resulted in murder charges for Burr that were dropped eventually. All of these are examples of past societies that used violence or death as a means to resolve an issue. So why is it "unbelievable" to have car duels resulting in death as a means of a futuristic mechanism to further business?
I, of course, say it doesn't. That this is an entirely believable plotline that could theoretically continue the progressive nature of death and duels into the future. More so because of how the storyline was written. Morgan's writing is the cohesive tape that helps keep everything together and if his writing wasn't so fluid and descriptive, graphic at times; if his writing hadn't injected character to the characters; if the story from beginning to end did not stick to the imagined business mechanism than of course the story would be a lot harder to suspend reality and become involved. Of course, Morgan does all this. In fact he does better than this and keeps you guessing. The ending is much more dark, yet hopeful, and doesn't happen as many of the other cookie cutter books out there typically do.
My only qualm, and this happens with all his books, is that the sex scenes are so gratuitous and unnecessary. I am a fan of all things descriptive in a book, even sex, but Morgan always seems to take it one step further and sometimes makes some scenes as though you are reading porn.
That being said, I would definitely recommend this book as well as Morgan. A definite recommend.
4.5 stars.
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Market Forces Books In Print, Audio Books.