Machine Vendetta: 3 (The Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies)

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The Panoply is a small but mighty police and peacekeeping organization of which Tom Dreyfus is a high ranking officer.

She tells him that another rogue AI, known as the Clockmaker, Aurora’s fierce enemy, is trying to capture her so that he can control the Yellowstone system without opposition. It's always a shame when a book serises isn't quite able to stick it's ending properly; Alastari Reynol's world-building shines through and the yellowstone he presents is every bit as futurstic and mystical as any other. Machine Vendetta is the third book in the Prefect Dreyfus Emergency series featuring a officer of the law for a system of floating city states that orbit the planet Yellowstone, and the enemy that wants to destroy everything including Tom Dreyfus. The action, technology, character development, and scope of "Machine Vendetta" really worked for me. From the king of modern space opera comes a new adventure in the Prefect Dreyfus series— Machine Vendetta is a thrilling tale of deadly conspiracies and old enemies that refuse to die.Indeed, it may be that the Tench incident is an act by those determined to destroy the democratic condition of the Glitter Band. Meanwhile, Creature has brought into the prefecture a candidate for membership the daughter of the murdered prefect, who is not who she. No, I hadn't, this was simply a case of Reynolds having a lot of stuff happen outside of the written story. These action sequences are spectacular, and the sense that more will happen adds to the pressure which builds as the book progresses. My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Orbit Books for an advanced copy of this hard science fiction story/ police procedural set in the far future about a group of diverse city states that orbit one planet, and the threat to their continued existence.

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. If you've read a few books from Reynolds before, you're aware that identity issues may be his favorite plot device. And when an old enemy approaches Tom with news that something is going on, something that is powerful Dreyfus begins to investigate, and things start to go very wrong. I started off publishing short stories in the British SF magazine Interzone in the early 90s, then eventually branched into novels.Reynolds combines depth in characterization and dazzling hard-science applications to keep the reader turning pages. I wanted to know how the story would play out, and it was interesting, but didn't rush me through with anticipation. 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.

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. Reynolds has perfected a clipped style of moving stories forward at a fast pace, but that also means that characterization comes through more through action than introspection. Four years ago, when an investigation linked to one of his most dangerous adversaries got a little too personal, Dreyfus arranged for Tench to continue the inquiry by proxy. Dreyfus works the scenes like a seasoned police officer and we do our best to keep up and play along!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.