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Sci-Fi and Fiction reads: Altered Carbon and The Girl on Train

I often alternate between fiction and non-fiction books in my reading regimen, just to break the monotony and have a change of perspective. I read these two books Altered Carbon and The Girl on Train. I picked up Altered Carbon because it was one of the top rated Sci-Fi novels on Goodreads and I picked up The Girl on Train because it was mentioned in one of the book reviews for Eileen (see my blog post here). I don't think each of them deserve a blog post of their own so that is why this combined post.

Altered Carbon

This is a sci-fi book about a crime story in 2500. The usual suspects of sci-fi like inter-planetary travel, floating whore houses, space ships, are obviously part of this universe. As expected, there is indirect condescension towards religion, in this case Catholicism, which is also a convenient plot point for the novel. The special aspect of this book is that your consciousness is condensed into what is called as a "disc" and can be digitally transferred to anywhere in the universe. You can pair a disc with any body (which is called "sleeve") to have a physical presence. There are some special "enhancements" like neurachem for improving the response time of the body in combat.

The story is fairly bland. The actual resolution of the crime seems over dramatic. Climax is long and drawn out. The progression towards the climax was also slow. Given that this is the first book, the author does explain a lot of things. So the book is fairly verbose. There are some psychological aspects of the new universe which I found very interesting. For example, talking to a body you recognize very well, but in reality there is a different person living in the body. Conversely, a person you know very well is living a different body. I found the psychological aspects of living forever using cloning and digital backup were interesting. Some physical aspects of the universe that I was expecting were AI hotels and virtual torture. Overall, I found the universe to be only moderately interesting. Nothing too ground breaking, frankly. I am not disappointed with this book. I will probably read the entire series. The internal monologues of the protagonist piqued my interest in the sequels.

The Girl On The Train

A typical over dramatic family drama. The plot was very thin to begin with. On top of that, there are some boring "traits" like alcoholism, divorce, abortion, loss of child. I have observed a trend in recent fiction that a character is considered more deep if they have suffered a trauma. I did not find the main character to be interesting at all! Other than getting drunk and puking all over the place, this character rarely does anything. I think the last 50 pages could have been condensed to 10. Unlike Eileen, this is not a character study type novel. Overall, I am thoroughly unimpressed. 

Apparently, this book was made into a movie as well. I couldn't even finish the trailer. I hope god (yes god with a small g, deal with it) has mercy on the people who watched the movie in theaters.

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