I am currently reading a great book called "Altered Carbon" by Richard Morgan.

It's great so far and I'm only about 70 pages in. I noticed that a lot of reviews were saying that it's ultra-violent. Well, it does start off with the main character/narrator getting killed, so I guess that does qualify as violent.

The scene in the hotel lobby with the 20-millimeter cannons could probably be deemed violent too.

Hmm... maybe they're onto something. I can't wait to see where the book goes from there!

The main concept behind it is that in order to facilitate rapid interstellar travel, you have your personality backed up on a computer and then downloaded into a new host body or 'sleeve' as they call it. This also allows you to effectively live forever so long as you either do remote backups of your personality or make sure that the little recording device implanted in you doesn't get destroyed.

It's a neat concept and it lets the author kill off characters left and right without any long term concequences. Heck, one guy is trying to convince the police that he was murdered and did not commit suicide.

So far it's like a futuristic detective novel with the aforementioned nifty violence. I highly recommend it!

And it has a really shiny cover too :)