Award-winning author Alastair Reynolds creates "a fascinating hybrid of space opera, police procedural and character study" ( Publishers Weekly ) with this novel set in the Revelation Space universe. Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a law enforcement officer with the Panoply. His beat is the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, the teeming hub of a human interstellar empire spanning many worlds. His current case: investigating a murderous attack against one of the habitats that leaves nine hundred people dead. But his investigation uncovers something far more serious than mass slaughter -- a covert plot by an enigmatic entity who seeks nothing less than total control of the Glitter Band.
Review
"This is solid British SF adventure, evoking echoes of le Carre and Sayers with a liberal dash of Doctor Who."― * Publishers Weekly on The Prefect*
"Absorbing...gripping in the extreme...A fine provocative portrait of utopia on the brink. The relentless narrative momentum it employs simply underscores the pertinent urgency of that topic. The resulting mixture of space opera and police procedure is sublime entertainment."― * Locus on The Prefect*
"[A] magnificently imagined world."― * Booklist on The Prefect*
"Alastair Reynolds has developed real skill in mixing a detective investigation mystery with a background that is as thoroughly hard science as anybody's...Eminently satisfying."― * SF Site on The Prefect*
"An adroit and fast-paced blend of space opera and police procedural, original and exciting."― * George R. R. Martin*
About the Author
Alastair Reynolds was born in Barry, South Wales, in 1966. He studied at Newcastle and St. Andrews Universities and has a Ph.D. in astronomy. he stopped working as an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency to become a full-time writer. Revelation Space and Pushing Ice were shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award; Revelation Space, Absolution Gap, Diamond Dogs, and Century Rain were shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Award, and Chasm City won the British Science Fiction Award.
"A fascinating hybrid of space opera, police procedural and character study."
From Booklist
Reynolds returns to Revelation Space to follow the trials and tribulations of Tom Dreyfus, prefect of Panoply, tasked with maintaining democracy throughout the Glitter Band. Between an apparently minor security flaw in the voting software and an apparent attack that left an entire habitat destroyed and the only survivors flawed beta-level copies of three of its inhabitants, Dreyfus is caught in a web of good intentions gone bad. Tension is high as the threads leading to a conspiracy to control the Glitter Band and a plan to destroy people’s rights ostensibly to protect them come together faster than the planners intended. There are secrets in the highest ranks of Panoply; even Dreyfus has kept some from himself. The endgame is creative, though as usual with Reynolds, neither plot nor solution is simple. The questions he raises about freedom and the fascinating solutions his characters come up with are relevant to our own time, and the thriller aspects keep us engaged with the magnificently imagined world in which those questions are resolved. --Regina Schroeder
Description:
Product Description
Award-winning author Alastair Reynolds creates "a fascinating hybrid of space opera, police procedural and character study" ( Publishers Weekly ) with this novel set in the Revelation Space universe.
Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a law enforcement officer with the Panoply. His beat is the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, the teeming hub of a human interstellar empire spanning many worlds.
His current case: investigating a murderous attack against one of the habitats that leaves nine hundred people dead. But his investigation uncovers something far more serious than mass slaughter -- a covert plot by an enigmatic entity who seeks nothing less than total control of the Glitter Band.
Review
"This is solid British SF adventure, evoking echoes of le Carre and Sayers with a liberal dash of Doctor Who."― * Publishers Weekly on The Prefect*
"Absorbing...gripping in the extreme...A fine provocative portrait of utopia on the brink. The relentless narrative momentum it employs simply underscores the pertinent urgency of that topic. The resulting mixture of space opera and police procedure is sublime entertainment."― * Locus on The Prefect*
"[A] magnificently imagined world."― * Booklist on The Prefect*
"Alastair Reynolds has developed real skill in mixing a detective investigation mystery with a background that is as thoroughly hard science as anybody's...Eminently satisfying."― * SF Site on The Prefect*
"An adroit and fast-paced blend of space opera and police procedural, original and exciting."― * George R. R. Martin*
About the Author
Alastair Reynolds was born in Barry, South Wales, in 1966. He studied at Newcastle and St. Andrews Universities and has a Ph.D. in astronomy. he stopped working as an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency to become a full-time writer. Revelation Space and Pushing Ice were shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award; Revelation Space, Absolution Gap, Diamond Dogs, and Century Rain were shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Award, and Chasm City won the British Science Fiction Award.
From Publishers Weekly
The seventh novel set in Reynolds's Revelation Space milieu (most recently encountered in his 2007 collection Galactic North ) is a fascinating hybrid of space opera, police procedural and character study. One of the 10,000 colony habitats of the utopian Glitter Band has been destroyed, and title character Tom Dreyfus, a cop who patrols the Glitter Band beat, is assigned to learn whodunit and why. Meanwhile, his protégé, Thalia Ng, shepherds a supposedly minor series of software upgrades on several other habitats, while Dreyfus's superiors oust their leader, ostensibly for her own good. Reynolds unfolds revelations layer by onionskin layer, supplying enough detail to imply a novel's worth of unwritten backstory without ever obscuring the stakes and personalities. The high-quality characterization more than compensates for the slightly too shadowy villains. This is solid British SF adventure, evoking echoes of le Carré and Sayers with a liberal dash of Doctor Who. (June)
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Review
"A fascinating hybrid of space opera, police procedural and character study."
From Booklist
Reynolds returns to Revelation Space to follow the trials and tribulations of Tom Dreyfus, prefect of Panoply, tasked with maintaining democracy throughout the Glitter Band. Between an apparently minor security flaw in the voting software and an apparent attack that left an entire habitat destroyed and the only survivors flawed beta-level copies of three of its inhabitants, Dreyfus is caught in a web of good intentions gone bad. Tension is high as the threads leading to a conspiracy to control the Glitter Band and a plan to destroy people’s rights ostensibly to protect them come together faster than the planners intended. There are secrets in the highest ranks of Panoply; even Dreyfus has kept some from himself. The endgame is creative, though as usual with Reynolds, neither plot nor solution is simple. The questions he raises about freedom and the fascinating solutions his characters come up with are relevant to our own time, and the thriller aspects keep us engaged with the magnificently imagined world in which those questions are resolved. --Regina Schroeder