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A review by mykhe
Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan
3.0
I was more than a little let down by this one. I was at page 74 when I was about to give up completely, so I googled some reviews to see if it was worth it. One of the better reviews said "hold on until page 100. It gets much better then." More like page 174, and even then I wasn't that sold. While the end is believable, it was also very expected. Morgan, who is so good at dialogue in both the Takeshi Kovacs and Ringil Eskiath series, goes on at length to very little avail. He could have dispensed with the marital fights far earlier and limited the inane dialogue of a lot of the business chatter. His descriptions, usually "cinematic" and outstanding, are weak here; although, I'll credit that to the bleak world outside the corporate sphere and bland one within.
The character development is the biggest draw of the novel once the novelty of *Death Race* meets *Wall Street* meets *Mad Max* wears off. The reader is given a great idea of who Chris Faulkner is at the beginning of the novel, and then expands him to so much more as the novel goes on. That's actually, the entire reason why I could cope with the ending. I didn't like it, and I kept wishing for something else to happen even when I spotted the end 100 pages before it happened, but it was honest.
And, ultimately, that and the "some of this has already happened, 'what if?'" factor are what kept me reading. (This novel was published about 3.5 years before the Great Recession.)
The character development is the biggest draw of the novel once the novelty of *Death Race* meets *Wall Street* meets *Mad Max* wears off. The reader is given a great idea of who Chris Faulkner is at the beginning of the novel, and then expands him to so much more as the novel goes on. That's actually, the entire reason why I could cope with the ending. I didn't like it, and I kept wishing for something else to happen even when I spotted the end 100 pages before it happened, but it was honest.
And, ultimately, that and the "some of this has already happened, 'what if?'" factor are what kept me reading. (This novel was published about 3.5 years before the Great Recession.)