Books – The Prefect

[a_cubed]

Still catching up with Alastair Reynolds novels. I’d missed House of Suns so I’ve just ordered that (and the very recently published Blue Remembered Earth) and am no onto Terminal World, but more of those when I’ve finished them.

The Prefect, as PurpleCthulhu pointed out to me, is set in the backstory of the main Revelation Space universe books, in the Glitter Band. There’s a pathos to this story caused by knowing of the events offscreen in Chasm City and Redemption Ark. It reminded me of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe where the Compere talks about struggling for a better future, when everyone who’s been to the RatEotU knows there isn’t one. THat’s just gravy to a brilliant meld of police procedural (I love cross-genre detective/SF and detective fantasy), Baroque Space Opera and hard SF. THe main character of Dreyfus is a brilliant viewpoint, and Thalia Ng is pretty good, too. For such a complex plot with post-mortal humans and AIs wandering around everyone’s motivations add up well and unlike Pushing Ice I didn’t find a discordant note in the whole space opera. A great addition to the Revelation Sace universe. Once I finish the novels I have the Galactic North short story collection (all RS stories, I think), though I may leave that aside for a bit and hit one of the other catch-up authors first. I was trying to catch up with Gene Wolfe but Pirate Freedom wasn’t as good as all the reviews (to me, at least) and An Evil Guest was just dowright BAD, which put me off Wolfe again for a bit, though I really must catch up with Soldier of Sidon, the Wizard Knight and the Books of the Long and Short Sun, which are all older ones and should be better than Evil Guest.

Current Mood: Full of Head Cold

Current Music: Mononoke Hime Soundtrack

Originally published at blog.a-cubed.info