I remember enjoying Altered Carbon when I read it quite a while ago now (I can't remember when, I am reasonably certain in's on our bookshelf somewhere). I don't remember a lot about it but running off that very vague memory I do feel that the shallowness and basic disregard for life was one of the points and thematically it seemed to be more about ethics around immortality and basically the same rich people getting to do whatever the hell they want because they have money (I remember one scene where this person was saying whenn they were supposed to get resleeved they found themselves not in their own body because some rich person had decided that they liked their body and had just...taken it) with the murder kind of just being a convenient thread to hang all of that other nonsense on.
I haven't seen the show and don't plan to, poor J still tries intermittently but has more or less given up on trying to get me to watch anything because well given the choice between spending a couple of hours on 3d or a couple of hours watching a movie we all know which one I'm going to pick x_x
RE: Altered Carbon: A book worse than the adaptation