An atmospheric tale of corruption and abduction set on Mars, from the author of the award-winning science fiction novel Altered Carbon, now an exciting new series from Netflix. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE GUARDIAN Hakan Veil is an ex–corporate enforcer equipped with military-grade body tech that’s made him a human killing machine. His former employers have abandoned him on a … machine. His former employers have abandoned him on a turbulent Mars where Earth-based overlords battle for profits and power amid a homegrown independence movement. But he’s had enough of the red planet, and all he wants is a ticket back home—which is just what he’s offered by the Earth Oversight organization, in exchange for being the bodyguard for an EO investigator. It’s a beyond-easy gig for a heavy hitter like Veil . . . until it isn’t.
When Veil’s charge starts looking into the mysterious disappearance of a lottery winner, it stirs up a hornet’s nest of intrigue and murder. And the deeper Veil is drawn into the game, the more long-buried secrets claw their way to the Martian surface. Now it’s the expert assassin poised against powerful enemies hellbent on taking him down—by any means necessary.
Praise for Thin Air
“Kick-ass . . . Mixed in with the thriller-esque action and cyberpunk backdrop is a hard-boiled noir story complete with a twisting and turning plot that keeps readers on their toes.”—Los Angeles Times
“Richard K. Morgan wants to destroy your Mars fantasies. . . . It’s a grim vision, but one that Morgan finds far more plausible than the cheerful visions of plucky Mars colonists common in sci-fi.”—Wired
“A robotically enhanced Jack Reacher [in a] dazzlingly intricate game of political double- and triple-cross, spiced with tastily kinetic battle sequences.”—The Guardian
“If you ever imagined that the core esthetics and themes of cyberpunk—lowlifes and high tech; corporate dominance; future noir; post-human evolution and cyborg adaptations; hardscrabble urban environments—were played out, Thin Air will set you straight, and kick your butt in the process. . . . Both kinematic and cinematic, [Thin Air is] limned by Morgan with balletic precision and smashmouth grace.”—Paul Di Filippo, Locus
more
I’ve said before, Richard K. Morgan is the author I most want to be like when I grow up. I discovered him through his Takeshi Kovacs novels, and gobbled his backlist. I’ve loved his take on fantasy, and think his Black Widow comic story is the best in print. The video games are excellent; his story-based work gets the nothing-but-net 5/5 from distinguished critics like Giant Bomb.
I say this to help you understand my excitement on the release of Thin Air. Let’s get into it.
Our story starts with protagonist (…not quite a hero) Hakan Veil, financially marooned on Mars. He busts up a nightclub, murders a few people who need killing, and winds up in jail for his trouble.
Veil’s not your usual down-and-out. He’s ‘retired’ from some pretty epic special forces. He’s competent, but not in the ways that are important for his survival. The mission he finds himself in through bad circumstance and extortion is political, where the only thing that matters is the rich staying rich, and the powerful going through an epic land-grab.
The little people are squeezed, pulped, and nothing but grimy gruel survives. Veil’s trip becomes personal; somewhere along the way he loses sight of who’s paying me for all this and turns to who am I gonna make pay. It’s not a redemption story, because Veil doesn’t want your forgiveness, but for all that it’s a justice story. Or perhaps a judgment one.
In typical Morgan style, he doesn’t spoon feed this tale to you. There’s no lengthy paragraphs of exposition. You won’t find conveniently placed dialogue so two characters can explain WTAF is going on. You find this out my smelling the grit in Mars’ regolith, stubbing your toes against the seamy underside of organised crime, and facing down the powerful who just don’t want to hear truth.
While I’m going to tell you: you must read this, I’m also going to issue two warnings.
– Morgan’s British, which means he went to school where people curse as a form of punctuation. His writing is real; this isn’t some for-show nonsense to get the masses titillated. Thin Air’s set in a future without a lot of unicorns and rainbows to be found. If you’re that guy who doesn’t like reading excellently-placed cursing, steer clear. The rest of you, welcome aboard; this book’s for you.
– My copy from Amazon was rife with typographical/typesetting errors. My give-a-damn meter usually reads a zero on proofing or grammar errors; if I understand the intent, that’s good enough for me. The Kindle edition of this book has a lot of errors with page breaks within dialogue, italicized text stopping off 1/2 way through a sentence, and that kind of thing. Once or twice I was left head-scratching over who was talking, or what was going on. Gollancz should do better, as it’s immersion-breaking to the point of dropping my review a point.
If you’re in any doubt about whether a master of storytelling, let alone sci-fi, is back in the sadle: relax. This book is worth your time, and if you’re like me you’ll gobble it in two days and have no regrets about the lost sleep.
Morgan does it again! HOW long has it been since the Altered Carbon series? Way too long, but Thin Air seems to have benefitted from the author’s downtime. Set in a gritty, dangerous Mars colony, the story features a former “overrider” (like an air marshal for spaceships) now working a protection gig, babysitting an investigator from Earth as she tries to solve a missing persons case that tangles them both up in deadly trouble. Morgan’s prose is a sensory delight. Every sentence is a polished gem of noir hardness. The worldbuilding is beautifully thought through, inventive and scientifically plausible. I wish I had written this book and I don’t say that often!
Not as much irony as Altered Carbon but plenty of the rest of Morgan’s style.
Richard K. Morgan’s Thin Air is not quite being marketed right – I have seen no mention that this novel is set in the same world as his earlier Thirteen/Black Man (US/UK titles). This might be an attempt to distance the new work from what’s often considered not to be one of Morgan’s better works.
Personally, I loved Thirteen. But Thin Air is night and day better. It’s a thick book and the action takes place entirely on a noir vision of Mars, and a surprisingly reasonable one. Mars has been colonized with the help of atmosphere-holding forcefields and biological improvements that allow the colonists to survive on a lot less oxygen.
The title is, like the original UK title of Thirteen, something of a pun…except even more so. Thin Air refers not just to the Martian atmosphere but to the mysterious disappearance at the center of the story.
Our protagonist, Veil is, like the protagonist of Thirteen, a genetically engineered human “variant.” Unlike the earlier book, he was not created to be an aggressive super soldier, but rather to be an overrider – a human pilot who is pulled out of cryosleep when a long distance spaceship gets into trouble. But he’s still basically a super soldier. And one who got mustered out after a screw up and left stranded on Mars. His goal: To get back to Earth.
But he gets pulled into a wonderful web of crime, conspiracy, and arguments over the future of the “high frontier.”
Thin Air is part noir, part cyberpunk and even a good chunk western. Morgan is the master of noir cyberpunk, and it shows in this book, which demonstrates a mature writer on the top of his game. The book is morally ambiguous, deals with themes of nature, nurture, and breaking free of both in a way that almost equals (in a very different way) the work of C.J. Cherryh. We get a deep view into the mindset of somebody who is at once very human and not quite so.
This is Morgan’s best work yet, and I highly recommend it to people who like noir, grittier futures, and a reasonably decent mystery (I wouldn’t call this a mystery book, but…)
Content warning: This book contains explicit violence and somewhat explicit M/F sex.
Great cyberpunk/scifi read. Many extra points for the noir-style narration, which I find amazing!