The world's population has taken advantage of the new matter teleportation machines to provide instantaneous travel. The problem is that it rips their souls from their bodies, leaving behind animated thinking corpses bereft of love, compassion, and empathy. They also do not tolerate the living.
I really enjoyed this book, but about halfway in it transforms from theoretical and political sci-fi (which I was very excited about) to a typical and borderline-boring zombie apocalypse/living vs. undead type story which has been told many times before. The ending also was a bit rushed, ambiguous, and unsatisfying. Ultimately I really enjoyed reading it though, and it kept my interest very well.