by Mike Collins

Corporations financing insurgencies. Businessmen dueling on abandoned highways in jacked up cars for contracts. A young man spiraling downward into a system he has no chance of beating. Market Forces has it all and then some. As Faulkner is told on his first day “You come to work with blood on your wheels or you don’t come at all.”

Richard K. Morgan, Locus and Phillip K. Dick Award winning author for Altered Carbon, writes a compelling near future novel in a world that doesn’t seem all that far off from our own. Huge corporations have begun a practice called Conflict Investment, in which they finance whomever seems likely to prevail in small wars around the globe.

Young Chris Faulkner, a man from humble beginnings finds himself on the fast track with Conflict Investment giant Shorn Associates. Hotheaded and impulsive, Faulkner slowly starts to become a player and a moneymaker for Shorn. All the while he makes one morally conflicted choice after another and watches his marriage crumble as a spectator.

Once all the players are introduced the novel takes off into a world filled with political wrangling, explosive gunfights, personal betrayals and corporate misbehavior. The show stoppers are certainly the auto duels. In the first major one of the novel, Faulkner and Bryant face off against a rival corporation for a contract that involves six cars, rocket launchers and a media blitz. The duels are covered in a style that would fit ESPN.
The Drivers as they are known are worldwide celebrities, on television and magazine covers.

While certainly different than any of Morgan’s three Takeshi Kovacs novels, he employs a similar fast paced style that draws the reader in. Quick glimpses of locations and technology that could become the starting point for entire novels, he uses them effectively to make a believable world for his characters to inhabit. The real strength of Morgan’s writing is his characters. Having a cast of that are so ethically compromised must have been a tall task. Aside from their shortcomings, the major players in Market Forces are likeable and come across on the page as fully realized.

Market Forces should be a worthwhile read for fans of near future science fiction or for anyone who enjoys fast paced thrillers.

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