Machine Vendetta: 3 (The Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies)

Product Information

What I think appeals to me most about science fiction as a genre is that there is no shortage of stories or imagination. In the end, all the desperate elements come together but nicely in a plot worthy of a murder mystery. I really like the universe that Alastair Reynolds creates in the space opera "Machine Vendetta": A massive swarm of over 10,000 independent orbital habitats, a fleet of far flung post-human spacefarers, an elite team of agents protecting the voting rights of the local citizens in a colonized solar system, and just to keep things interesting, a couple of god-like AI's that do not share empathy with humanity. As with the the other Alastair Reynolds space opera novels I have read, this was quite entertaining and was just what I needed. I confess that I did not find this episode as compelling as the others, partly because I could get the mystery pretty early, it's telegraphed pretty easily for anyone paying attention.

I don't know if this is a counterpoint to some of the police abuse stories we've seen recently, but it's hard not to see it as such.In my spare time I am a very keen runner, and I also enjoying hill-walking, birdwatching, horse-riding, guitar and model-making. Dreyfus feels that the death may be related to Tench’s ongoing secret investigation of Catopsis, sanctioned by Dreyfus after the events of Elysium Fire. 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.

You could read the book as a standalone, but a lot of the characters overlap from previous stories, so you'd be better advised to go in sequence. Machine Vendetta is a sharply drawn and finely told mystery, and my only concern is that, according to one statement of Reynolds, it could be his last, not only in the Prefect Dreyfus series but also in the Revelation Space universe.

Conspiracy filled stories of androids, aliens, other humans, or crystal worlds, living dinosaurs, and hyperpigs as shown in this story. The action takes place in "the glitter," a band of about 10,000 space stain like habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone.

I thank Alastair Reynolds and Orbit Books for kindly providing a temporary electronic review copy of this work.

Banks, I really appreciated the aspect of sophisticated agents using high technology, intelligence, and courage to "do the right thing". I wanted to know how the story would play out, and it was interesting, but didn't rush me through with anticipation. I did find however that reading about the familiar characters and setting made it not as impactful as say, his recent book Eversion. One can have ships move at hyperspace or travel wormholes, treating space like World War II fighters, or have lumbering near light transports taking years to get to their location.

Four years after the events of Elysium Fire, the relationship between Panoply and some of the habitats in the Glitter Band has deteriorated since we last visited.The Panoply is small in number, and at this time low in popularity due to the actions of one agent in an attack on a floating city that lead to many deaths. Prematurely writing this review because I started it on Netgalley without realizing that it is the 3rd book of a series. Panoply is a small, efficient police force, dedicated to maintaining the rule of democracy among the ten thousand disparate city-states orbiting the planet Yellowstone.