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3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Couldn't believe the author's world. Libertarian with no explanation for how some of the communities supported themselves. Couldn't believe the twin brothers.
Finally finished. It did not really improve. It's a bit like one of those movies that takes place entirely inside a crazy person's head: the author can do anything without needing to make sense.
Finally finished. It did not really improve. It's a bit like one of those movies that takes place entirely inside a crazy person's head: the author can do anything without needing to make sense.
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
The authorities in the Glitter Band are starting to worry; there one was death a couple of weeks ago that they have not be able to explain. Last week there were two more. This week there have been four. No one has been able to explain why, and the information that they have tried to elicit from the corpses themselves hasn't given any leads. The implants that link each citizen to each other and the state in a fluid form of democracy where citizens are consulted and vote on matters small and large, have gone rogue and killed their hosts. Are these just random failings of the implants, which is unheard of, or is there someone out there causing them to fail? Panoply realises that they have a problem on their hands, one that seems to be growing exponentially and they have no idea who will be next to die.
The secrecy surrounding the deaths is high as they cannot risk society finding out that there is a killer on the loose. Inspector Dreyfus is brought urgently up to speed on the cases so far and those that are happening as the investigation tries to develop leads. To add to their woes, Devon Garlin, a member of the elite from Chasm City, is raising the political game by questioning the authority of the prefects and society with the aim of driving wedges between the habitats; somehow he seems to know about the mysterious deaths of the people too. What was a worrying situation is fast getting out of control...
Set in the Revelation Space universe this is a fast-paced sci-fi detective thriller is full of twists and turns and Dreyfus and his team try to work out who is doing the killing. The tech in the futuristic world is quite spectacular and Reynolds still manages to make it sound completely plausible. The secrets are revealed a little bit at a time as the story races to its fairly dramatic conclusion. However, it did feel like the ending unravelled a little too much rather than being neatly terminated, but that might be because there is more to come in a subsequent book; I hope so. Another stunning book from one of the masters of science fiction.
The secrecy surrounding the deaths is high as they cannot risk society finding out that there is a killer on the loose. Inspector Dreyfus is brought urgently up to speed on the cases so far and those that are happening as the investigation tries to develop leads. To add to their woes, Devon Garlin, a member of the elite from Chasm City, is raising the political game by questioning the authority of the prefects and society with the aim of driving wedges between the habitats; somehow he seems to know about the mysterious deaths of the people too. What was a worrying situation is fast getting out of control...
Set in the Revelation Space universe this is a fast-paced sci-fi detective thriller is full of twists and turns and Dreyfus and his team try to work out who is doing the killing. The tech in the futuristic world is quite spectacular and Reynolds still manages to make it sound completely plausible. The secrets are revealed a little bit at a time as the story races to its fairly dramatic conclusion. However, it did feel like the ending unravelled a little too much rather than being neatly terminated, but that might be because there is more to come in a subsequent book; I hope so. Another stunning book from one of the masters of science fiction.
This series (The Perfect) is brilliant and gets better with every outing.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Look, it’s an Alastair Reynolds story so it’s good and interesting. It’s just not the best thing he’s written. For long stretches the story felt dull to me. The stakes weren’t very high and I didn’t really care about this particular plot line. The genius of the previous book is lacking here. And the various political factions of the RevSpace Universe have little play here. But, there’s still whiphounds (which are awesome), the grandeur of the Glitter Band, and hints that Aurora and the Clockmaker AIs are still out there doing their thing. If your not committed to reading all of Reynolds’ books, I’d say you can safely skip this one.
I always enjoy Reynold's Revelation Space stories, and this one is good even if it rehashes a lot of the plot skeleton from another story.
If you were a fan of any of the Prefect and Chasm City stories you'll be a fan of this one, too. This is classic Alistair Reynolds.
It's been a while since I visited the realm of Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space. And I jumped into this book 2 without reading the earlier novel that introduced the Prefect Dreyfus, his detective associates, and his particular neighborhood and time. I am glad I did take the leap rather than wait until I could read all of these books in some kind of order. All this is to say, jump in without worrying about catching up; these stand on their own.
Reynolds wrote Elysium Fire as a police detective murder story. I also don't read a lot of these lately, yet again will say jump in. The mysterious deaths that need solving provide a window into the technology and social future the author challenges us to imagine. It is a world where implants, preparing to (in some regards) survive death, and other alternations proliferate as much as fast flight linking complex built environments.
The central technology has to do with an elaborate, technology-based mechanism for basing political policy on continuous voting and polling. The detectives belong to a unit set up to police this hyper-democracy. And in the era of the book, they encounter a rebel leader promoting a breakaway "true" or more traditional social compact.
Of course, publishing or reading a story of competing visions of popular democracy may seem both a relief and awkward giving the political times we are passing through now. It's kind of fun to imagine a global police unit of highly idealistic detectives rushing around from emergency to emergency to protect democracy as the society has defined it. Yes, diverting and fun.
At the same time, without connecting the continuous democracy mechanism to the economics it serves, at the limit, it tends to become an abstraction, a plot device rather than something that completes and defines Reynold's worlds. What does the voting and polling serve, aside from stability? This makes the rebellion more sympathetic, at least here. This is my main wonder about the book, making it 4-star instead of 5.
It was also a bit challenging to get into the web of relationships among Dreyfus and the other three central characters from the detective unit. That's my only regret about not reading the first book first. Even so, in a way, having to infer the back story just makes their interactions and dilemmas with each other all the more interesting. It is not possible to process the storyline without taking in their personalities.
I am glad I read this now, as a standalone, since the whole series of Revelation Space novels seem too much to catch up on. It didn't hold back appreciating the story, and only marginally, as I just mentioned, understanding Dreyfus and his band of associates. For this, I thank Netgalley making a pre-release review copy available. The published version will be available soon; do look for it.
Reynolds wrote Elysium Fire as a police detective murder story. I also don't read a lot of these lately, yet again will say jump in. The mysterious deaths that need solving provide a window into the technology and social future the author challenges us to imagine. It is a world where implants, preparing to (in some regards) survive death, and other alternations proliferate as much as fast flight linking complex built environments.
The central technology has to do with an elaborate, technology-based mechanism for basing political policy on continuous voting and polling. The detectives belong to a unit set up to police this hyper-democracy. And in the era of the book, they encounter a rebel leader promoting a breakaway "true" or more traditional social compact.
Of course, publishing or reading a story of competing visions of popular democracy may seem both a relief and awkward giving the political times we are passing through now. It's kind of fun to imagine a global police unit of highly idealistic detectives rushing around from emergency to emergency to protect democracy as the society has defined it. Yes, diverting and fun.
At the same time, without connecting the continuous democracy mechanism to the economics it serves, at the limit, it tends to become an abstraction, a plot device rather than something that completes and defines Reynold's worlds. What does the voting and polling serve, aside from stability? This makes the rebellion more sympathetic, at least here. This is my main wonder about the book, making it 4-star instead of 5.
It was also a bit challenging to get into the web of relationships among Dreyfus and the other three central characters from the detective unit. That's my only regret about not reading the first book first. Even so, in a way, having to infer the back story just makes their interactions and dilemmas with each other all the more interesting. It is not possible to process the storyline without taking in their personalities.
I am glad I read this now, as a standalone, since the whole series of Revelation Space novels seem too much to catch up on. It didn't hold back appreciating the story, and only marginally, as I just mentioned, understanding Dreyfus and his band of associates. For this, I thank Netgalley making a pre-release review copy available. The published version will be available soon; do look for it.