Woken Furies

## Chronology

***Woken Furies*** is the third published science fiction novel by Richard K. Morgan. It is a sequel to *Broken Angels*, and features the anti-hero Takeshi Kovacs. This addition to the series casts light upon Kovacs' early life providing information on his post-envoy activities.

## Blurb

### Kindle and audible

Takeshi Kovacs has come home. Home to Harlan's World. An ocean planet with only 5 percent of its landmass poking above the dangerous and unpredictable seas. Try and get above the weather in anything more sophisticated than a helicopter and the Martian orbital platforms will burn you out of the sky.

And death doesn't just wait for you in the seas and the skies. On land, from the tropical beaches and swamps of Kossuth to the icy, machine-infested wastes of New Hokkaido the hard-won gains of the Quellist revolution have been lost. The First Families, the corporations and the Yakuza have a stranglehold on everything. Embarked on a journey of implacable retribution for a lost love, Kovacs is blown off course and into a maelstrom of political intrigue and technological mystery as the ghosts of Harlan's World and his own violent past rise to claim their due.

Quellcrist Falconer is back from the dead, they say and hunting her down for the First Families is a savage young Envoy called Kovacs who's been in storage.

### Hardcover and paperback

Richard K. Morgan has received widespread praise for his astounding twenty-fifth-century novels featuring Takeshi Kovacs, and has established a growing legion of fans. Mixing classic noir sensibilities with a searing futuristic vision of an age when death is nearly meaningless, Morgan returns to his saga of betrayal, mystery, and revenge, as Takeshi Kovacs, in one fatal moment, joins forces with a mysterious woman who may have the power to shatter Harlan's World forever.

Once a gang member, then a marine, then a galaxy-hopping Envoy trained to wreak slaughter and suppression across the stars, a bleeding, wounded Kovacs was chilling out in a New Hokkaido bar when some so-called holy men descended on a slim beauty with tangled, hyperwired hair. An act of quixotic chivalry later and Kovacs was in deep: mixed up with a woman with two names, many powers, and one explosive history.

In a world where the real and virtual are one and the same and the dead can come back to life, the damsel in distress may be none other than the infamous Quellcrist Falconer, the vaporized symbol of a freedom now gone from Harlan's World. Kovacs can deal with the madness of AI. He can do his part in a battle against biomachines gone wild, search for a three-centuries-old missing weapons system, and live with a blood feud with the yakuza, and even with the betrayal of people he once trusted. But when his relationship with “the” Falconer brings him an enemy specially designed to destroy him, he knows it's time to be afraid.

After all, the guy sent to kill him is himself: but younger, stronger, and straight out of hell.

Wild, provocative, and riveting, Woken Furies is a full-bore science fiction spectacular of the highest order–from one of the most original and spellbinding storytellers at work today.

## Plot

Takeshi Kovacs finds himself back on his home planet of Harlan's World. Nine-tenths water, Harlan's World is surrounded by "orbitals" that were created by Martians. The Harlan's World orbitals are programmed to destroy any object of sufficient technological level flying above ~400 meters altitude and do so with high-energy beam weapons known as "Angelfire".

In the Kovacs universe, "Martians" are a long-dead, super-advanced, avian/winged species who disappeared from our galaxy, leaving behind inscrutable artefacts and a few pieces of operating technology. They are referred to as "Martians" by humans because our first discovery of them is on Mars. Their homeworld is unknown, lost in the millennium since they were active in any space humans have discovered. This mystery is compounded by the Martians' peculiar habit of showing all maps with the local settlement at the center of the universe, rather than relative to a fixed homeworld or system. Martian civilisation is covered in more detail in the second Kovacs novel, *Broken Angels*, which centres around a Martian gateway.

Kovacs is on the run after making numerous attacks against the Knights of the New Revelation, an extremist religious order. He has declared a personal vendetta against the New Revelation with the express intent of killing every member, revenge for the killing of a long lost love and her daughter for violating the strict tenets of the order.

While trying to secure passage after his most recent attack, he saves a woman named Sylvie from a group of religious zealots. In return, she allows him to take refuge with her mercenary "deCom" crew as they head out to decommission sentient military hardware that has run amok on a nearby continent. Sylvie is the "command head" of her crew, co-ordinating their missions using embedded circuitry and software. During one of these missions, Sylvie collapses, and upon recovery her personality appears to have been replaced by that of long-dead revolutionary leader Quellcrist Falconer.

The crew return to base where they discover a younger version of Kovacs has been illegally duplicated and is hunting them on behalf of the Harlans, dictators of Harlan's World. Most of Sylvie's crew is killed and Sylvie/Quellcrist is captured. Kovacs schemes to rescue Sylvie by approaching old criminal associates of his, the Little Blue Bugs.

The Little Blue Bugs mount a semi-successful attack on a Harlan fortress and rescue Sylvie/Quellcrist. Hiding from Harlan forces in a floating base, the neo-Quellists are sold out by its owner and recaptured. An assault by Kovacs and a single UN Envoy on the base ends badly when Kovacs is betrayed by the Envoy who was actually embedded with several colleagues. However, Sylvie/Quellcrist has established a connection with the AI/consciousness that operates the orbitals and calls down angelfire, eliminating their captors but sparing Kovacs and his original Envoy instructor and current revolutionary comrade-in-arms, Virginia Vidaura. Kovacs' younger self catches up with him and after a struggle, Kovacs decides not to kill his younger self but instead allow him life and the chance to make better decisions than he himself had to make. Nonetheless the younger self is killed by one of the survivors of the combat.

Kovacs, Vidaura and Sylvie/Quellcrist are left to wait and see whether they will be able to incite a planet-wide revolution with Sylvie/Quellcrist's newfound connection to the orbitals and the expansion of a long-dormant genetic virus, which will turn the population against the ruling oligarchy.

## Release details

* 2002, United Kingdom, Victor Gollancz Ltd, ISBN 0-575-07325-X Pub date 17 March 2005, Hardback
* 2005, France, Bragelonne, ISBN 2915549230, Pub date 26 May 2005
* 2004, United States of America, Del Rey, ISBN 0-345-47971-8 Pub date 27 September 2005, Hardback
* 2005, Poland, ISA, ISBN 83-7418-114-1 Pub date 2006, Paperback
* 2008, Italy, Casa Editrice Nord, ISBN 978-88-429-1516-4, Pub date 2008, Hardback