ParaNormalRomance.org

"dark fiscal satire"

In the middle of the twenty-first century, the market place controls all aspects of life with no governmental redistribution of wealth to interfere. In this global economy the big money makers are those who peddle Conflict Investments; there is a large and continuous market for the selling of all types of arms to small insurgent bands at a phenomenal price while encouraging the guerilla bands to make war not love. Recently safety has become an issue for the affluent.

Chris Faulkner of Shorn Associates has become a successful salesman peddling arms and related equipment. The Brit enjoys his literally cut throat job especially the executive perks such as driving a car and killing other road hogs. However, he has recently made a mistake by allowing mercy to someone he defeated during a road rage skirmish. He vows to never again allow his conscience to get in the way of his lifestyle. His chance surfaces when the eternal South American coup d'etat may be out of control. Though wary and thinking back excessively to his ghetto roots, Chris plans to rectify this problem.

This gloom and doom future will not be one to worry about social security as no social or security seems to be the norm in Richard K. Morgan's dark satirical spin of MARKET FORCES out of control. The story line paints a grim future in which to paraphrase Jessie Ventura as the wrestler not the governor that it is not whether you win or lose, but how well you cheat. Though Chris' growing disaffection is not adequately explained, the Enron and Bush-Blair economics are taken to the extreme in this powerful condemnation of a systematic handout to the rich while everyone else pays the price.

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted March 9, 2005

Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted January 18, 2007

From Publishers Weekly Morgan's brutal, provocative third novel (after Altered Carbon and Broken Angels) charts the moral re-education of executive Chris Faulkner, who joins notoriously successful Shorn Associates, which specializes in "conflict investment" - financing totalitarian regimes, as well as guerrilla movements, in developing countries that are never allowed to develop. Taking his theme from such well-known critics of Western capitalism as Noam Chomsky, Susan George and Michael Moore (all listed as sources), the author presents a bleak near-future that includes continuing job loss through NAFTA, the undermining of national economies like that of China and the creation of a permanent underclass. Faulkner and other company hotshots compete in highly dangerous, often fatal car races, which reflect the ruthlessness of their corporate careers. Faulkner's auto-mechanic wife, Carla, strives to humanize him, but he will have to kill a lot of people with his car, guns and, in the penultimate bloodbath, a baseball bat before seeing the error of his ways. While some may be put off by the graphic violence and the heavy-handed polemics, most readers will find Morgan's economic extrapolation convincing and compelling.