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marrax journal.
The Glitter Band. Ten thousand independent city states, a hundred million souls, orbiting the planet Yellowstone. Truly the pinnacle of human achievement, and the ultimate example of democracy, interaction, and abstraction.
The guardians of this democracy is Panoply, a police force of sorts. Its Prefects ensure that any untoward attempts to influence voting does not go unpunished, even if it means cutting off whole habitats from the network for decades at a time. For a citizen used to the constant humdrum background chatter of abstraction, its sudden, unexpected loss is worse than the loss of any limb.
Returning from such a lockdown, one which ended violently, Prefect Tom Dreyfus is immediately sent to investigate a new crime: someone has wiped out an entire habitiat, killing all its citizens and leaving only digitised witnesses. Though it looks as if the crime is a simple case of revenge, Dreyfus just can't let the case go, and the trail he follows leads him to come face-to-face with the greatest threat to the Glitter Band for nearly a decade. His work doesn't go unnoticed, though, and he begins to feel the pressure being applied from within his own organisation, as well as from without. In order to save the day, Dreyfus has to outwit his enemies, and look closer at some of the most shocking events ever to occur in the history of the Glitter Band, whilst also receivng some disturbing hints as to its possible future.
I really liked The Prefect. Alastair Reynolds may do epic, world-and-century-spanning hard SF well (the Revelation Space trilogy), but it's his detective stories where he really comes into his own. Chasm City - his other novel set in and around the planet of Yellowstone, a location that is also at times central to the Revelation Space series - and the standalone Century Rain are probably my two favourite Reynolds novels. The Prefect pushes itself right in there amongst them and sits very snugly next to Chasm City. It puts a bit more flesh on the bones of certain past events alluded to in previous novels. That's not to say you need to have read any of them to enjoy it (it helps, because certain terms and concepts are never fully expanded, though they are certainly covered in detail in other novels; particularly the Ultras, and the relationship between the Conjoiners and other human factions).
It's this brevity of style that makes The Prefect such a good read. The plot never lets up, and there's always something happening that moves it along. It may be 400 pages, but none of those feels insignificant. What helps is that you develop a genuine sense of rapport with each of the central characters (the primary side plot, which is, I kid you not, akin to a George Romero Zombie flick, really gets you wanting a particularly crazy plan to succeed).
As a standalone work, The Prefect is well worth picking up. As a companion to Chasm City (which, for the sake of picking up background on Yellowstone, the Glitter Band, and the RS universe in general, I'd recommend you read first, even though it's chronologically set about a century after The Prefect), it's superb and one of Reynold's best.
Next reviews: Metal Swarm by Kevin J Anderson, The Dreaming Void by Peter F Hamilton
marrax journal.The Glitter Band. Ten thousand independent city states, a hundred million souls, orbiting the planet Yellowstone. Truly the pinnacle of human achievement, and the ultimate example of democracy, interaction, and abstraction.
The guardians of this democracy is Panoply, a police force of sorts. Its Prefects ensure that any untoward attempts to influence voting does not go unpunished, even if it means cutting off whole habitats from the network for decades at a time. For a citizen used to the constant humdrum background chatter of abstraction, its sudden, unexpected loss is worse than the loss of any limb.
Returning from such a lockdown, one which ended violently, Prefect Tom Dreyfus is immediately sent to investigate a new crime: someone has wiped out an entire habitiat, killing all its citizens and leaving only digitised witnesses. Though it looks as if the crime is a simple case of revenge, Dreyfus just can't let the case go, and the trail he follows leads him to come face-to-face with the greatest threat to the Glitter Band for nearly a decade. His work doesn't go unnoticed, though, and he begins to feel the pressure being applied from within his own organisation, as well as from without. In order to save the day, Dreyfus has to outwit his enemies, and look closer at some of the most shocking events ever to occur in the history of the Glitter Band, whilst also receivng some disturbing hints as to its possible future.
I really liked The Prefect. Alastair Reynolds may do epic, world-and-century-spanning hard SF well (the Revelation Space trilogy), but it's his detective stories where he really comes into his own. Chasm City - his other novel set in and around the planet of Yellowstone, a location that is also at times central to the Revelation Space series - and the standalone Century Rain are probably my two favourite Reynolds novels. The Prefect pushes itself right in there amongst them and sits very snugly next to Chasm City. It puts a bit more flesh on the bones of certain past events alluded to in previous novels. That's not to say you need to have read any of them to enjoy it (it helps, because certain terms and concepts are never fully expanded, though they are certainly covered in detail in other novels; particularly the Ultras, and the relationship between the Conjoiners and other human factions).
It's this brevity of style that makes The Prefect such a good read. The plot never lets up, and there's always something happening that moves it along. It may be 400 pages, but none of those feels insignificant. What helps is that you develop a genuine sense of rapport with each of the central characters (the primary side plot, which is, I kid you not, akin to a George Romero Zombie flick, really gets you wanting a particularly crazy plan to succeed).
As a standalone work, The Prefect is well worth picking up. As a companion to Chasm City (which, for the sake of picking up background on Yellowstone, the Glitter Band, and the RS universe in general, I'd recommend you read first, even though it's chronologically set about a century after The Prefect), it's superb and one of Reynold's best.
Next reviews: Metal Swarm by Kevin J Anderson, The Dreaming Void by Peter F Hamilton
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