Morgan, Richard: Broken Angels

In the outer reaches of space, man in the 26th century is discovering the relics of Martian colonisation while showing that human nature seem unable to change with greed, violence, treachery and stupidity present to the full. Death can be a thing of the past as the top of the spine or stack can be transferred to a new body or sleeve which is done frequently in armies.
The book tells an involved tale of retrieving a Martian battle cruiser through a hidden portal with many visiccitudes on the way leaving only the narrator and a few others alive (or dead) on their way to a different planetary system. The science seems plausible though unlikely and is not all-encompassing - spaceships take years to cross the galaxy though there is both a
shortened subjective time and the longer real time - and working out the technology used by the Martians is slow and rather limited. A book of nearly 500 pages, it raises some interesting ideas about the environment, human nature and the way that multi-national corporations appear to be taking over from national governments without preaching against the backdrop of an adventure story within the science fiction milieu.