Rating: 4/5
What would it mean if we didn't really die? In Altered Carbon, a sci-fi detective novel, that is a reality. When a person dies, their consciousness is downloaded until it can be resleeved, or put into another body. These can be synthetic bodies, clones, or even the bodies of people that have committed crimes and are downloaded out of the body to serve their sentence. While still available, multiple resleevings are typically limited to the wealthy or members of military organizations. Real death can still occur if someone's stack, the device implanted in their spine to record their consciousness, is destroyed.
Takeshi Kovacs has been brought to Earth by Laurens Bancroft to find out who "killed" him. Bancroft's place in society allowed him the luxury of having a backup to his consciousness, as well as the money to hire someone to find his killer. Kovacs must adapt to a new environment and a new body, while wading through a prior police investigation and a following a bread trail that leads him into the underbelly of Bay City, formerly San Francisco. His training with the Envoy Corps, a high level military organization, allows him to adapt quickly to his new circumstances. Despite, or maybe because of, Kovacs' hyper-violent, over-sexed, and drug filled life, he makes for a very engaging narrator.
Running throughout the story is the question of what it really means for people to live in a world where bodies are basically disposable. This is examined through an ethical and religious lens. There is a thoughtfulness to this idea that brings the world to life.
The book harkens back to works like The Big Sleep, but felt too reliant on violence.
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