Richard Morgan: Altered Carbon

This an interesting blend of noir detective story and Cyberpunk with a hard jawed cigarette smoking anti-hero righting wrongs in a futuristic setting. In this future world digital transportation of human personas has become commonplace and physical bodies have become trade-able commodities. An intriguing corollary of this is that spaceflight is generally unnecessary. Instead you just hire a body at your destination and transmit your persona to it. The story keeps up a cracking pace and it makes for an enjoyable read but I felt that the whole affect was let down somewhat by the way the flawed hero softens as the book progresses. By the end of the book I felt he was more Wuss than Tough guy - not what I expect from my anti-heros.