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Agreed. It's a must-read for anyone interested in a thrilling story mixing ethics of simulated realities, uploading of consciousness, self-modification and finite automata.

Simulated beings are a repeated topic in Egan's stories. Some of them are freely available online, for instance https://www.gregegan.net/PLANCK/Complete/Planck.html (where simulated beings create clones of themselves which are to fall into a black hole, hoping to gain insights on fundamental physics) and https://www.gregegan.net/INCANDESCENCE/00/Crocodile.html (where a couple, after having lived for more than ten thousand years, decides to embark on a final adventure, leaving all loved ones behind because of differences in time perception).

I read Diaspora last year and Permutation City this year. They both blew me away. Some of the most original, thought provoking science fiction I've ever read.

Third that. This book is incredible and gripping. There is no soft intro, you are thrown into the story from the first paragraph.