The Steel Remains

Richard Morgan became hands down my favorite sci-fi author on the basis of just his first novel, "Altered Carbon". The follow-ups were good, but not nearly as hard-hitting. "The Steel Remains" is the much-anticipated result of his effort to switch over to the fantasy genre. I think the only other fantasy book I've ever read was the Lord of the Rings, so I'm really no expert in the genre. "The Steel Remains" is good, but it's more like Morgan's second and later books than his first. Somewhere after that first book he started taking too long developing his characters' inner dialogs and flashbacks, and I simply have no patience for this. In real life you don't get to hear the inner dialog of the people around you. Ditto in good movies, voice-over narration being the crutch of the crappy director in my mind. So this book was good, competent, but nothing to write home about.