Well crafted sci-fi thriller. ( )

This novel is set in the Glitter Band space habitats/Yellowstone planet locale of previous novels. The prefect is Tom Dreyfus, a policeman for the Panopoly and indefatigable seeker after the truth. He fixes a voting irregularity in one habitat, sends a deputy to fix another voting irregularity in four habitats and starts to unravel why a ship crewed by distrusted body-morphers known as Ultras destroyed a small space habitat using its space drive. The unravelling makes up the main thread of the story, taking in a homicidal computer replica of a long-dead woman, a asteroid containing a hidden spaceship of the Borg-like Cojoiners, a malign computer intelligence built using the mind of a dead explorer of alien relics, a traitor and a cabal in the Panopoly itself and a dastardly plan to save the Glitter Band by enslaving it. Dreyfus, his 'hyperpig' sidekick and his deputy all acquit themselves well. For all the invention present, the core plot is rather textbook and the good guys beat the bad ones as expected. Nothing, not even a revelation from his past, diverts Dreyfus from his ordained role. ( )

Great read, worth the wind up as you get familiar with Reynolds' vivid characters, settings, and technologies. ( )

Alastair Reynolds treats us to a far-future police procedural in the Glitter Band, the ring of ten thousand habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone in the Epsilon Eridani system, and gives us a good look at how his future direct-democratic government called demarchy works.

The story follows the investigations of Thalia Ng— a specialist in the voting technology that makes demarchy work— and her boss, Tom Dreyfus, a seasoned field prefect with a strong dedication to follow justice no matter where it leads. As they separately deal with a bug fix to centuries-old voting code and the mysterious destruction of an obscure orbital habitat, they uncover problems related to the troubled history of the development of artificial intelligence technology.

Like the rest of the Revelation Space books, this one is fairly dark; the tale stands well on its own, and should be a good read for people who have not previously read Reynolds’ work. ( )

Conjoiners, Demarchists et al. A much easier read than some of his others but a good plot and ending nonetheless. ( )