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Title: The Prefect
Series: Revelation Space #7
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 516
Format: Digital Edition
Series: Revelation Space #7
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 516
Format: Digital Edition
| Synopsis: |
Tom Dreyfus is a
Prefect, an officer in the Panoply, a police force that enforces the
few laws of the Glitter Band that orbits the planet Yellowstone.
Things start off
with a bang as an Ultra ship uses its engines to wipe out 1 of the
10,000 Habitats. Dreyfus is sent in to investigate by his boss, Jane
Aumonier. Jane had a run-in several years ago with an entity named
the Clockmaker and has a mechanical tick on neck that places all
sorts of restrictions on her or it will kill her.
During Dreyfus's
investigation it becomes apparent that the Ultra Captain was framed
to cover something else up. While this investigation is going on,
Dreyfus's newest underling, Thalia Ng, is sent out on a routine
software patch update to 4 of the Habitats. Said patch closes a
loophole that allowed those habitats to sway the voting in their
habitats, which is strictly against the Law. Thalia installs the code
but finds out that it hid some other code that allowed another entity
to take over those Habitats.
Thus is revealed
the Bad Guy, Aurora Nerval-Lermontov. She is the only surviving
member of the 80, an experiment by the Sylveste's to truly digitize
humans. She has been hiding and found a ship full of Conjoiners. Said
conjoiners could see the future and saw the melding plague, which
spells the end of the Glitter Band, and thus Aurora, as she would be
destroyed by the melding plague. Aurora wants to prevent this plague
but the only way she thinks is viable is to take over and control the
entire Glitter Band, no matter how many people she has to kill.
Thalia must survive
on the Habitat she is on while the rest of the Panoply tries to deal
with Aurora, who has a traitor inside the Panoply. She uses the
resources of the 4 Habitats she controls to create drones to spread
her control code to other Habitats. Panoply ends up nuking several of
them to contain the spread but realize they can't really stop Aurora.
Dreyfus realizes
that the first Habitat destroyed by the Ultra ship probably contained
the Clockmaker and that Aurora was behind it, as the Clockmaker is
the only entity Aurora truly fears. Dreyfus races against the traitor
in their midst to find the Clockmaker and release it.
The Clockmaker and
Aurora end up inhabiting the entire data band, which slows them down
and makes them a non-threat for at least a century or two. The
Panoply and the Ultra's get together to clean up the remnants of
Aurora's forces and Dreyfus deals with the traitor, regains some
memories he never knew he'd even lost and Life Goes On.
| My Thoughts: |
This was a decent end to my Revelation Space series read. Since I had
already read about the melding plague and the glitter band, the
situation presented to me wasn't completely outside what I could
comprehend.
That being said, this was only a decent end to my Revelation Space
series read. I enjoyed what I read but I was neither wowed or
impressed nor disgusted.
Dreyfus came across as this careworn, stoic, tired man who could
barely function. I didn't enjoy him as a character even while he
wasn't boring. No character was boring though. Each and everyone was
unique and made the story what it was. I didn't feel like anyone
should have been cut out nor did I feel like I wanted “someone
else”. But by the end of the book I realized that my time with
Reynolds was over.
It feels kind of funny to be giving this 4stars and yet saying it
wasn't good enough to keep me reading more Reynolds, but hey, thems
the breaks! Reynold's style just never grabbed me like Neal Asher's
writing did, so take from that what you may.
Glad I read this compendium of 7 books but I've had enough.
★★★★☆
