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mentekid 's review for:

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
4.0

It’s a fun film noir (in a book) that combines tropey detectives solving a murder with the interesting concept of “Digital Human Freight”, a technology that allows a human conscience to be downloaded into any body.

The worldbuilding is thoroughly enjoyable as the author has fleshed out so many possibilities of the technology, and its impact on crimefighting, sex work, interstellar travel, and the mega-rich. I’ve now read similar stories (memory called empire and Ancillary Justice) and although I’d rank both of them higher in terms of literary achievement, none of them did this so well or at this extent.