Not sure why, but this didn't really click for me. It's an interesting premise, and pretty good writing and characters, but ultimately I came away not having particularly strong feelings one way or another.

I had read Ferrett Steinmetz's 'Mancer' series and despite rave reviews by so many, I could never quite see what the fuss was all about. Reading the slug line for this book I thought the concept sounded really interesting so I thought I'd give Steinmetz another go.

The concept: In the not-too-distant future, as more and more people are connected on-line someone has created a virtual heaven so popular that people are dying to get in. Literally. To access this digital heaven, known as the Upterlife, the synapses of one's brain are uploaded and the physical body dies. This was great for the elderly whose bodies were about to wear out anyway.

But the dead, now with nothing but time to think and communicate, don't think too highly of the living. In fact, the living have become slaves to the dead - maintaining and upgrading the servers that host the dead network. The dead also begin a bit of snobbery, deciding which living person is worthy of being uploaded to the Upterlife and which ones are banished to an everlasting death.

One young boy, Amichai, rebels against the certain future of serving the dead for himself and his sister, and during the course of his rebellion he discovers that he is not alone in wanting a better life.

I really, <em>really</em> like the idea here. Steinmetz has a great knack for high sci-fi concepts. That this doesn't steer away from any sort of potential religious controversy is definitely in its favor. But a good sci-fi novel needs so much more than a great concept. It also needs characters and motivation and heart.

The first couple of chapters opened up so nicely and I thought to myself - ah, I think I <em>will</em> enjoy a Ferrett Steinmetz novel! But the further I got into it the less I cared. The concept became richer and clearer and I was really enjoying it, but the characters never became any more full or interesting than they were in the first couple of chapters. Because of this, the book just became a strange combination of great concept/uninteresting characters. So while I wanted to read on to understand what was happening, I also just wanted the book to be over because the people who inhabited this world were so very uninteresting.

Looking for a good book? The Uploaded by Ferrett Steinmetz shows that the author is wonderful at giving the reader unusual and tremendous science fiction ideas but the characters and the worlds he builds don't quite live up to the concepts.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

The world created within this story was fascinating. It was by far my favourite aspect of the novel. This dystopian world seemed possible in every single way, as technology advances with each year and I could see it coming to this point. The world was also rather terrifying and I would definitely NOT want to live in it, but lets be real, there isn’t a dystopian world that I would like to live in in the first place. It’s also a book that made me think a lot, which is something I also enjoyed.

The plot was very interesting, but I felt that it was overstuffed. The first half of the book was very good, the introduction of the world and characters was greatly done. The second half of the book is where the problem lies. A lot of things kept happening all the time and there were a lot of information dropped on the reader throughout the second part. I feel that this book would have been better on that aspect if it was a duology, as the events would have been a bit further apart from each other and there would have been more time to absorb the information.

As many things were crammed into the second part it also affected the characters and their development. They could have definitely be developed more, but with how the book is paced there really isn’t any time for that. This book definitely suffered with how much was crammed into the story. The characters in general were interesting and I liked most of them, in the beginning that is – some of them took a nosedive throughout the story. They weren’t the most memorable characters out there either.

Another problem that I had with this book is the love triangle. As you may know I tend to hate them and find them unnecessary in books and this was no exception to that. This book could have done perfectly well without it, it would have been even better. I also felt that the story ended quiet abruptly, not everything was wrapped up the way I hoped it would be. As I already mentioned, this book would have benefited so much if it were a duology.

All in all, this book was simply all right. It had an interesting premise and world, but the characters and relationships weren’t the best. Plus the story was very crammed. I would still recommend this book, if you enjoy dystopian novels!

Here's a YA novel based in a interesting premise - What if we could upload our consciousness into a machine? And after physical death we could continue to live in a server?
Inside the machine you could do what you want - play games all day, or, if you wanted, to work on a chosen field, building up endless experience!
But when these artificial consciousness gain the right to vote the balance between the living interests and the dead interests goes to hell as the dead start having more political weight and all they want is more server power.
Fun, with a high dose of refractoriness, The Uploaded is a nice read that could be great if personage development was less stereotyped.

I have only myself to blame for this. As I said before, I struggle with YA-Sci Fi but this sounded too intriguing to not pick it up. Also, I have been thinking, I might actually struggle with YA in general - there are brilliant books out there that I enjoy immensely, but more often than not it falls kind of flat for me. Which is a shame because it is such a varied genre with so many brilliant-sounding premises that I do not want to stop reading it completely.

This, again, has a brilliant premise: set in the future where a way has been found to upload conciousness into a digital heaven, the dead rule over the living. While they have endless time and resources to have adventures or learn more, they also have endless time to judge living and ensure that only those who are worthy will be uploaded upon their death. I found this a clever way to deal with real life problems but the execution was lacking. I found the real and devastating consequences of a democratic system where the dead are the only ones allowed to vote were not ellaborated on enough. The living conditions were remarked on (why bother with making the world look nice if these resources can be used to built better and better servers to host the deads' subconscience?) but the consequences for a society built only to serve the dead were left too unexplored for my taste. The book stayed superficial and repeated phrases and ideas over and over again (if I have to read the phrase "lowliest of criminals" one more time I am going to throw something; also the neologisms did not work for me: "earputer" and "The Upterlife" being the most annoying offenders).

The main character annoyed me without end; I have no idea what his thought processes were for screwing up his life (and his sister's with it) for what looks like slightly juvenile pranks. I also did not find him or anyone in the book to be very believable.

This will be a short review, because I'm a fan of Ferrett Steinmetz and I don't want to be too negative on what is probably just a fluke. Sad to say, I didn't like this book as much as the author's 'Mancer series. It's pure Steinmetz in the way it's cool, humorous, and entertaining, but something about the tone of this story just didn't sit right. I'm a bit confused as to the audience this was meant for, as it felt simultaneously too juvenile and too advanced. Our understanding of the world-building is muddled by too much confusing tech lingo and over-complicated rules and concepts. However, our characters are YA-aged and so obnoxious! I could only take them in small doses, which explained for why it took me so long to finish this.

So yes, I was disappointed, especially given how much I enjoyed the author's previous books. Granted, Uploaded might be his attempt to try something new and experiment with a new style - which is fine, but it's just not my cup of tea.

Ferrett Steinmetz has become one of my go-to authors; I go to him when I want an solid, original story, and I look to him for books that will catch my interest immediately.

I had been anticipating The Uploaded for a long while after seeing him tweet snippets of his #wip. I was pulled in a immediately by the strength of the characters, and their deeply sad background. It did have its signature moments of Ferrett humor shining through, though so it wasn't a maudlin story frm start to finish.

Excellent scifi , fun but not fluffy. Would recommend this to everyone.

In a world riddled by disaster, a teen with a pony finds a way to rid the shackles of the dead to breathe life back into the living.

The Uploaded, set in a distant future, sees the surviving populace serve as little more than slaves to actual ghosts in machines. The dead don't really die in this new world, rather, their living memories and sense of self are uploaded into a vast and wondrous server which renders their death irrelevant unless they are one of the few unlucky ones who have been judged by the dead to pass into the void - real death, as a result of their criminal acts.

This book has a great concept that builds as the story wades deeper into steadily crumbling real world, and ever expanding technological advancements of the virtual space. It's a young adult-ish book that will find a place among readers of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and Permutation City Greg Egan.

My rating: 3.5/5 stars. The protagonist, Amichai took a little while to grow me. I thought the world building was great and some of the concepts scarily real. A completely different novel from the author of Flex, The Flux, and Fix (which I highly recommend checking out).

For Amichai and the rest of his world, it isn't this life that matters, but the Upterlife. In Steinmetz' near-future portrayal, the world has been transformed by a technology that uploads the minds of the dead into an eternal afterlife of quests and games and challenges and happiness. The living--those not wiped out by epidemics, plagues, and decreased life expectancy-- do the drudgework necessary to maintain the server farms while dreaming of their deaths and their Upterlives. Amichai has grown up in an orphanage, but his love of pranks and his interest in programming--banned for the living-- have put him at risk of losing his place in the Upterlife. When he is caught during his most recent prank involving a pony in a nursinghome, he finds himself at the start of a journey that uncovers the darkest secrets of the Upterlife and the living world that remains.

I absolutely adored Steinmetz' previous series, Flex , but unfortunately, Uploaded just didn't really work for me. I was fascinated by the world, which reminded me a bit of an Egan novel. As someone who has always been terrified by the concept of eternity, I am always intrigued by the idea of uploaded consciousnesses. As a programmer, I also was amused at the idea of programming being forbidden. However, all of the characters, including Amichai, felt one-dimensional and unsympathetic to me. We have the "Hero Geek," the "Best Friend," the "Best Friend's Hot Sister," and the "Beautiful Dangerous Cultist." I think the book is somewhat held back by its stereotypes: the young female characters that are controlled by their sexuality, the odd comments about Judaism, the "Magical Negro" vibe of the one African-American character, and the whole "NeoChristian" thing. One of the greatest strengths of speculative fiction is that you can use worldbuilding to create a complex metaphor to explore real world issues. So why create an obsessive, backward, death-worshipping cult and call it "Christian"? The use of that tired portrayal of Christianity is a bit of a pity because I found some of the commentary quite thoughtful, such as:
"Something in her needed to believe the world was like a bank-- you deposited in kindness and got it all back in the end."
It would be much more effective if separated from tired tropes.

Overall, while the ideas of the novel are fascinating, the execution just didn't quite work for me. It could be that I'm just not the target audience-- I'm not a gamer and may simply have failed to recognize a lot of the in-jokes. While this didn't really hurt my enjoyment of Flex , I may simply have failed to "get" Uploaded.. I generally love quirky programming-imbued scifi, but this just doesn't quite have the insider geekery of Stross or Pratchett. If you're already a fan, then this is probably worth a try, but if you're new to Steinmetz as an author, I'd definitely recommend Flex as your first venture into Steinmetz' work.

This dystopian, YA science fiction near-future adventure explores a premise that I’ve recently come across in other books – Reaper by Janet Edwards and The Real-Town Murders by Adam Roberts – whereby people are spending more time in a virtual reality at the expense of our organic, real-time world. There are differences, of course, and Steinmetz has the dead uploaded into a virtual Heaven, which sounds a great idea.

However, the dead are still in charge of governing and over time they out-vote the living, who are increasingly losing out to the dead. Professionals are inevitably dead – but imagine being treated by a virtual doctor who has been dead so long, he has no sympathy about the fact you are in a lot of pain. This is the kind of problem the living are coping with. I like this world very much, which is well thought-out and poses some interesting questions.

Our protagonist is certainly very ticked off with his situation. His parents, who died six years ago in one of the virulent plagues sweeping across the planet, spend their time and energy in a fantasy world looking out for dragons, rather than keeping in touch with their children. Amichai, bright and inventive, is boxed into a miserable dead-end maintenance job so necessary to keep the Upterlife going, so relieves his frustration by breaking the rules and getting into mischief. However, he is treading a very narrow line – if he finally succeeds in really annoying the authorities, the dead can examine his ‘Shrive’ his last ‘save point’ where his thoughts and memories are uploaded and if they judge him to be a criminal, he would then die a ‘meat death’ where he won’t be uploaded once he dies. Unsurprisingly, the real-time population are really fed up, but reluctant to revolt given the way the odds are loaded against them.

I enjoyed this one. The plot twists and turns as Amichai flounders to find his place in this unhospitable world with a strong supporting cast. I think I could have loved it a tad more if I hadn’t found Amichai so flaky and annoying, but I’m aware this is a very personal response. My grouse is that when the situation is so dire, his impulsive risk-taking is plainly inappropriate and a lot of the narrative tension rides on it. However, if only he behaved with more responsibility, he wouldn’t have found himself in such a bad place – and given that his sister is pretty much reliant on him, I lost patience with his attitude. That said, the author makes a good case for the reasons why he is as he is – and he is thoroughly called to account for his behaviour and forced to reconsider his attitude, so there is a sense that he grows up during the book. If you enjoy dystopian science fiction reads with plenty of action, then I recommend this one.

While I obtained the arc of The Uploaded from the publisher via NetGalley, this has in no way influenced my unbiased review.
8/10

I seem to have some sort of built-in resistance to the writing of Ferrett Steinmetz, an auto-immune response that defies explanation. Authors I admire praise him; friends of mine gush about his books. Sadly, I find that I can’t tolerate his fiction for too long without needing to put it down, or disengaging to a degree that makes it hard to retain what I’ve read. There may be a physical allergy as well. I developed a weird rash on my hand while reading The Uploaded that didn’t go away until I was finished, no matter how much cortisone and aloe I slathered on it. I know, I know, correlation does not equal causation. But I still think it’s kind of fishy.
I had pretty much the same reaction to this novel as I did to Steinmetz’s first novel, Flex. I don’t find his characters believable or likeable, his worldbuilding plausible, or his stories at all engaging. The Uploaded is set in a future where those deemed worthy can be uploaded upon death to a VR haven awkwardly named “The Upterlife” (also, the most popular mobile devices are called “earputers”, as if one artlessly rendered phrase per book was not enough for the author). The protagonist is Amichai, a malcontented teenage boy who makes dumb choices for no discernable reason other than to mess up his, and apparently somehow also his sister’s, chances of getting into The Upterlife (I really, truly hate that term). Until, of course, he decides to reverse course and stop being such an underwhelmingly petty human. I think. For me, he never actually stops sucking at being a person. But that could just be me.
Steinmetz does not appear to be a technically bad writer, just one whose works hold little interest for me. I picked this one up thinking there was a chance I was wrong about Flex, and that I would finally “get it” with The Uploaded. Alas, I still don’t get it. I don’t think I’ll make the same mistake again.

The Uploaded is a science fiction thriller set in a world where the technology has been developed to upload a persons brain after they die to a program called ‘The Upterlife.’ There you can live out the rest of eternity in your own idea of paradise-providing you l follow the rules and spend your mortal live serving the dead and maintaining the servers. Amichai wants a better life for him and his sister, left alone on Earth after his parents went into the ‘Upterlife.’ After his future is in doubt after a number of pranks, Amichai joins with his best friend, his best friends sister and his nemesis on a mission to hopefully secure a well paying and stable job so her can support his sister who is recovering from a deadly disease. However, this mission does not go as planned as they uncover a government conspiracy and join with one of the infamous terrorist groups to fight for the rights of the living and try to improve life on Earth.

What I Liked

The concept and in depth world building- I really loved the concept behind the book, and I felt it was a new interpretation of the virtual reality story that I have not read before. It was really interesting to think about a world where death is not the end, you are simply uploaded to a computer program where you can live out your wildest dreams. What is there to stop people from simply dying to enter this utopia and who will be left on earth to maintain the servers and the programs for the dead. I thought the world and setting was very well written and constructed throughout the book, and this was my favourite part of the story.

The characters- While all of the characters were interesting, I particularly liked the main character Amichai and one of the supporting characters Evangeline. Amichai undergoes a lot of growth and development throughout the book. Early on his decisions and thought processes are very short term and self serving, and it takes him a while to understand the full consequences of his actions. With his friendship with Evangeline and the other Neo-Christians (the terrorist group) we see him see a bigger picture of the world and become one of the major spokespeople for living rights. Evangeline is also another well written character. She starts as a devout Neo-Christian, born into a very tough situation and tasked with fighting against those who believe and serve the ‘Upterlife’ as she believes that will not lead to true peace after death. We then see her go through a crisis of faith and navigate her feelings for Amichai and her purpose in life and I really enjoyed reading about her journey and seeing her development.

What I Didn’t Like

The pacing-I felt the book moved too quickly and had too much in the story. We moved from major plot point to major plot point in an instant and I really wanted the author to take some pages to debrief on what had just happened and take some time to flesh out the story a little more. There were also a little too much packed into the story and I felt either the plot should have been made a little simpler, or the story be split over two books.

The love triangle-Sometimes love triangles are OK, but in this case all it did was annoy me. It just did not seem to fit into the story and made for some really awkward scenes by the characters. It also reduced two of the major female characters to romantic plot devices at some points, and I felt both of them may have been stronger characters if the love triangle was removed or it was written better.

(Review originally appears at Speculative Chic: http://speculativechic.com/2017/08/29/cyber-life-after-death-the-uploaded-by-ferrett-steinmetz/)

The question of what happens when a person dies has been grappled with for as long as humanity has existed. Is there a heaven? A sort of paradise that waits for us after we close our eyes for the last time? Is there eternal punishment awaiting those who did not meet whatever criteria that the paradise demanded? What if there was a way to be sure that you would automatically awaken in that fabled paradise? In his newest novel, Ferrett Steinmetz examines this possibility with great success.

Steinmetz is a clever writer indeed. He has hidden an examination of one of mankind’s biggest questions (what happens when you die?) in a novel filled with plenty of action, snarky characters, and a lovable pony sidekick. In the future that Steinmetz proposes in The Uploaded, death is a minor inconvenience rather than the totality that it is today. Upon death, assuming that one has lived up to the standards set by those who preceded you into the Upterlife (the name given to the cyber-Heaven created to house the dead), your consciousness is uploaded into a paradise filled with anything that your heart truly desires. You become immortal, alive forever in the greatest playground/video game in existence, without the limitations of real world physics to hinder you. Our hero, Amichai, insists early in the novel that real life is worthy of being more than just a tolerable existence. He is largely in the minority in this opinion. Most of the living have an almost slavish devotion to the Upterlife, and why shouldn’t they? The Upterlife is where one can have a truly perfect life — careers, for example, do not exist for the living: the architects, writers, politicians, musicians, (and every other career imaginable) are jobs that belong solely to the dead. Endless adventures and possibilities exist in the Upterlife.

With that kind of adventure awaiting you, why would you want to stay alive in the first place? The world itself has become very grim. Natural resources are all but depleted. Infrastructure has been allowed to deteriorate. All of the living spend their days working for the ever-present dead, maintaining the servers that house their Heaven. The dead rule the living in a way that is nightmarish when you consider the implications.

The deeper story, beneath the pony, the witty dialogue and the fantastic action scenes, deals with the idea of what it means to live your life here in the present instead of for the future. The question of whether it is better to live with an eye towards eternity instead of firmly in the present lingers in the background of the entire novel. I am not going to get into a deep religious discussion here, but the idea of living up to certain moral standards in order to be rewarded in the afterlife is a theme that is common in many religions. Is there a clear answer to this question?

Of course there isn’t. That doesn’t mean that Steinmetz doesn’t offer an answer or an opinion on the question; the ending, while strong and perfect for the story, leaves things in an ambiguous place for the reader. This is not at all a criticism. I enjoy stories that force the reader to confront and examine their own beliefs. This novel does so beautifully.

If you’re curious, you can read the prologue and first chapter of the novel here. If you like what you read, the book is available on September 5th.

In conclusion: I am glad that I read this. I look forward to revisiting this story. My review of the book is doubtlessly colored by the fact that my own grandfather passed away recently, and the mystery of what waits beyond the veil is very heavy on my own mind. This is a meaty story, if you allow it to be. If you’d rather not ponder such heavy themes, enjoy the novel for the delightful surface story. I do not think you will be disappointed.

The nitty-gritty: A fast-paced, frantic glimpse into the future that left me more puzzled than exhilarated, The Uploaded is one wild ride.

I had read so many rave reviews of Steinmetz’s ‘Mancer series, that I’ll admit I was expecting to be blown away by The Uploaded just for that reason. Unfortunately, my expectations were a little too high, and I ended up with a vague feeling of disappointment after finishing it. What could have been a very cool futuristic setting was muddied by way too much “tech speak” and a complicated set of world-building rules. Now, granted, you need to take my opinions with a grain of salt, because a whole bunch of readers LOVED this book, which is evident by its high Goodreads rating and gushy reviews. But for me, I found myself overwhelmed by the manic characters, non-stop action and confusing set-up.

Meet Amichai Damrosch. Six months ago, his parents died and now their minds have been uploaded to the servers of the Upterlife, a virtual playground where the dead spend their days engrossed in high-tech virtual reality games and for fun, spy on the living. Amichai’s sister Izzy has fallen prey to the plague known as the Bubbler and now resides in an institution, trying to recover enough to be placed in a menial labor job. Both Amichai and Izzy want nothing more than to die and join their parents in the Upterlife, where life is easy. Here on earth? Not so much, as the Bubbler has decimated the planet and left chaos in its wake. Amichai has always believed in the system, knowing that a long life of hard labor will eventually earn him a spot in Heaven. And it’s the dead who have the final say as to who gets in and who gets voided, so most people follow the rules.

But with the help of his friends, Amichai uncovers a plot by none other than the creator of the Upterlife, Walter Wickliffe, a plot that will ultimately destroy what little life the living have. Amichai devises a daring plan to stop Wickliffe and give the living back their dignity. But his plan is risky at best, and it’s going to take a lot of ingenuity--and one pony--to pull it off.

If you are one of those readers who enjoys high-tech futuristic science fiction, with an emphasis on “tech,” and you also enjoy YA-aged characters and lots of humor, then you’ll most likely have a blast with The Uploaded. Steinmetz isn’t afraid to throw his readers into the deep end of the pool without water wings, so you need to be quick to keep up with his unique and crazy ideas. I’ll admit it took me a while to grasp all the intricacies of this world, and even then I’m not sure I understood everything.

But I have to give this story props for having some very cool ideas. Steinmetz’s set-up is nothing short of brilliant: a future where death isn’t necessarily the end, and often times is way better than being alive, at least that’s how the living perceive it. Most living people are clambering to die and be “uploaded,” but there are rules. For example, in order for a person to eventually join the Upterlife, regular brain scans must be taken, a process called “Shriving.” During a Shrive, the dead sift through a person’s memories and determine a ranking, and depending on how you Shrive, you could come up “Liminal,” which gives you the best chance of making it to the Upterlife, or one of the four ranks below that. It seems to be a way of keeping the living population in check, and under the thumb of the dead. I also loved the idea that the dead can see through any camera and spy on the living, and so of course there are broken cameras scattered throughout the city where the living can hide their activities from the dead.

Steinmetz throws in a character named Evangeline who is a NeoChristian, someone who doesn’t believe in the Upterlife but instead worships the “Big Skybeard.” (lol!) She’s also “the most beautiful girl” Amichai has ever seen. The problem I had with Evangeline, and later with a girl named Peaches, is that Amichai falls for both girls and honestly can’t decide which one he likes more. I didn’t really like either girl, personally, and their rivalry over Amichai felt like just another YA love triangle. I also found a lot of the action and dialog silly and juvenile, which is one reason the book just didn't hold my attention. (For teen readers, however, this won't be a problem.)

And like your typical YA set-up, most of the adults in the story are evil. Even Amichai’s dead parents would rather immerse themselves in a video game than chat with their children, and they don’t seem concerned at all about poor Izzy’s illness. (The dead can visit the living through TV and computer screens.) The only adult character I liked was a woman named Mama Alex who leads a resistance group and holds “Blackout Parties” in areas of the city where the cameras aren’t working and kids can dance without worrying about being watched. She was way more of a mother figure to Amichai than his own, flighty mother.

I think my favorite character in the whole story was a pony named Therapy, who Amichai buys and sneaks into the hospital in order to cheer up Izzy. As you can imagine, that doesn’t go too well, but I was thrilled when Therapy makes a reappearance later in the story. And why are people riding ponies instead of driving around in cars, you might ask? It’s just another one of the many quirks of this crazy world.

It took me a long time to read The Uploaded, mostly because I found other things I’d rather be doing. Steinmetz is undoubtedly one of the more creative authors I’ve run across, but unfortunately this book just wasn’t for me.

Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.

I’ve been keeping up with Ferrett Steinmetz for over 15 years on various internet platforms, and I’ve been jumping at the chance to read his books ever since he got an agent and was able to publish traditionally. His <i>Flex</i> series is a solid read across three books, and perhaps should have gotten more attention than they ended up receiving, but <i>The Uploaded</i> is Steinmetz’s shot at techno-dystopia. It… doesn’t always work.

Effectively, imagine if, instead of Social Security, the older folks moved their consciousness online instead. And they still got to run things, and it was up to the rest of us to maintain their servers and their way of life until it was out turn. That’s the idea behind this story, which follows some people who are willing to fight to undo the status quo.

The good on this is that, as with the <i>Flex</i> trilogy (and with some insight on how Steinmetz writes), there’s really not a wasted word here. The poetic-yet-seemingly-direct way he gets the plot from point A to point B is as much of a joy here as it was in his previous works. The issue, though, is that this is less of a story that lends itself to that sort of treatment. <i>The Uploaded</i> is reminiscent a lot of the sort of Cory Doctorow technopunk that has really hit home in the last few years, and the writing doesn’t always fit it. This means that the book does feel like it’s meandering off a bit in ways that were not probably intended. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, and the way that everything works out kept me engaged, but it’s not the same as <i>Flex</i> and doesn’t quite hit the same notes the same way as other books in this genre.

I don’t want to call it a miss, because the book still has its share of action and awesomeness. It’s just not <i>great</i> the way the <i>Flex</i> series was, and it’s just quite <i>good</i> in a lot of others. If the concept grabs you, the book probably will as well, but this is not as direct a recommendation for this book the way others might be. Dystopia, especially today, can be a tough sell, and the book makes a good attempt at being up to the challenge. Closer to a 3.5.

I really enjoyed this, the whole idea of being able to upload your consciousness so that you can live forever in a digital heaven is fascinating. I especially like the idea of being able to play computer games as if they were reality. Unfortunately this wonderful idea comes with a big down side and that's where the story begins. I loved the characters and was amazed by the imagination, but it was missing something, I'm not sure what.
Nonetheless I shall be recommending this title, especially to fans of Ready Player One.

Amichai Damrosch just wanted to keep his sister comfortable while they were alive, and prepare for their life after death. It's hard when the dead see all your memories once a day and vote on whether or not you can join them in the digital afterlife. Makes living that much harder.

The Upterlife was created so that people wouldn't be lost after death--their memories and consciousness could be uploaded to live on indefinitely. The problem is--the dead have more voters, so most of the resources and comforts in the living reality go to the care of their servers and virtual worlds rather than to the living that maintain them.

When Amichai and his friends run afoul of a secret government testing facility bent on subjugating the will of the living, he begins to question how their society works.

I pretty much love everything I've read from Ferrett Steinmetz, and The Uploaded is no exception. It's an inventive new dystopian world, where people look forward to death because their digital life will treat them with more humanity than their actual, physical human lifetime. People essentially slave away in reality to support the digital upper class.

Steinmetz knows his craft well, and gives us characters that are above all, interesting people. The Uploaded appears to be a standalone book, and it's one you'll want to grab for your 'to read' pile.

‘The Uploaded’ is a dark book. I’m going to give you that warning for free now.

If said warning doesn’t put you off then please continue…

Amichai is an Upterlife orphan, a teenager whose parents died in one of the horrific genetically modified plagues that are accidentally set loose on the living world every now and then, and ‘ascended’ to a digital existence. Freed from the chains of reality, pain and suffering, they’ve all but forgotten that they left two children behind, spending their days fighting dragons with their pain receptors turned off and sipping piña coladas alongside an artificial sunset.

Amichai is left in the physical world, full of bleak crumbling sky scrapers, questionable protein sludge and glistening servers, whose upkeep is all that he’s considered good for. A trickster at heart and someone who is just terrible at following rules, Amichai lives under the constant burden of the shrive, a ‘save point’ where his memories and experiences are periodically uploaded to the servers and judged by the living dead. Tip too far into ‘criminal’ and he will not be allowed to enter the upterlife, instead dying a horrifying ‘meat death’, his existence erased.

Following the effects of the Bubbler Plague, which annihilated much of the living population, kids like Amichai are a dying breed, both needed and treated with disdain by their ‘ancestors’. Amichai would probably care less if it wasn’t for the existence of his sister, a survivor of the plague, no longer considered fit to wear the badge of the LifeGuard, the proxy officers by which the dead ‘police’ the living. Surviving ‘robbed’ her of the chance to ascend to the servers early, instead forcing her to take on menial work in microchip factories until the end of her natural lifespan.

Life on Earth is hopelessly grim with some foregoing the promise of a digital afterlife altogether, instead choosing ‘meat death’ and the dream of Heaven, trashing the servers that they consider ungodly. Caught between the dead, who do not value his existence and the ‘NeoChristians’ who wish to rob him of his digital future, Amichai is in a bit of a bind. All he knows for sure is that, life cannot continue this way.

Something has to change.

This was a very clever book. It’s been a while since I’ve had a book make me think so much. It’s also a strangely apt book for our current political situation, with the older generations entangling our futures in the chains of their poorly thought out decisions.

It’s definitely more about the concept than the characters. The worldbuilding is astounding, every little detail meticulously thought out for maximum weight and horror. Although the story is very different, I got a real ‘Fallout’ vibe from the book. It’s a bleak horrible world, with people banding together the best they can just to deal with the hideousness of their lives. A dangerous job is no longer considered something worth avoiding, but something that could potentially lead to a quicker upload to the Upterlife.

It’s not a book for the faint hearted, it is relentlessly dark and relentlessly hopeless. I’d also put a big warning on the book for anyone who’s currently having suicidal thoughts. Although the book is, obviously, NOT advocating suicide, the way that characters talk about death and how much they are looking forward to it could be seriously triggering for some readers!

In the afterword, Steinmetz speaks about the fact that he’s been writing this book for years. You can really see it in the story through the attention to detail and the planning of each of the twists and turns. It’s a story that I really enjoyed just letting it take me where it went. I stopped guessing what Amichai would do next, instead accepting that I would probably just be wrong.

In comparison with the world, the characters are a little bit forgettable. I don’t think that’s necessarily a flaw, it’s definitely a story more about deeds than the people behind them, but I found myself forgetting some of the side characters names or losing track of their relevance to the story. Amichai is, however, a great lead. When I was reading, the image in my head was Robert Sheehan as Nathan in ‘Misfits’, irreverent, extraverted, but, under it all, caring and more than a little afraid.

It’s a book that makes you feel a little hollow inside. You’d like to think that those living a digital existence wouldn’t forget the needs of those that they leave behind, but you also know that it’s entirely likely. The dead in this world have the ultimate privilege, they do not fear for anything, not hunger, poverty or pain, for they have already triumphed humanity’s greatest fear, death itself.

So, all in all, a great standalone with exceptional world building. Books like this are why I read science fiction: huge ethical questions, dark not entirely unfamiliar worlds and massive concepts. A great book, and definitely one that will have me searching out Steinmetz’s back catalogue.

Many thanks to Angry Robot Books for a copy in return for an honest review!

The Uploaded packs great ideas in amongst piles of action and character. The premise that we can upload minds to a computer works out about as well as I would expect, resulting in a whole lot of dead people having a whole lot of ideas about how we should live.

It's an interesting analogy to religion, as the world turns to a strange sort of ancestor worship. I really appreciate how religion is handled in this book, and there are a lot of interesting thoughts here.

But really, the characters are what sell this book for me. It's YA and has all of the over-the-top emotions and relationships that I expect of YA. And action. Lots of action.

So yeah. You'll want to read this book.

I don't read dystopian, as a rule, and it's a pretty firm rule. Nor do I generally like books with a high body count. But by the time I discovered that this book is both of those things, I'd been charmed by the voice of its viewpoint character. I finished it and even enjoyed it, despite the fact that it's not the sort of thing I usually like.

It's told from the flipside of the "Rapture of the Nerds," the technological advance that enables personalities to be uploaded. The conscious dead outnumber the living, who are their miserable slaves, maintaining the servers and trying to be the kind of people the dead will eventually vote into the paradisal afterlife - or, as it's known, the Upterlife. Most people's greatest ambition is to be dead; culture consists of an endless series of reboots of franchises that were popular when the oldest dead were alive, and anything creative is in the realm of the dead. In self-defence, the dead have forbidden the living from learning to program. The most excruciating suffering of the living is dismissed with the argument that they'll get over the trauma in two or three hundred years.

The main character is an orphan (thanks to a mutated plague), whose parents are so busy on their World of Warcraft-style quests in the Upterlife that they neglect him and his sister. Partly in order to protect his sister, and partly because he's just a rebellious person, he links up with a rebel underground and with Neo-Christian insurgents (who see the Upterlife as blasphemous) to take on the inventor of the Upterlife, who is permanently President of the United States.

It's over-the-top. It's funny, moving, tragic, and eventually triumphant, though at high cost for all the characters. It's cleverly and skilfully written. If I didn't dislike dystopian stories with a high body count so much, I would certainly be giving it five stars.

I received a copy from Netgalley for review.