Paperback, 419 pages
English language
Published Jan. 23, 2018 by Orbit.
Ten thousand city-state habitats orbit the planet Yellowstone, forming a near-perfect democratic human paradise.
But even utopia needs a police force. For the citizens of the Glitter Band that organization is Panoply, and the prefects are its operatives.
Prefect Tom Dreyfus has a new emergency on his hands. Across the habitats and their hundred million citizens, people are dying suddenly and randomly, victims of a bizarre and unprecedented malfunction of their neural implants. And these "melters" leave no clues behind as to the cause of their deaths...
As panic rises in the populace, a charismatic figure is sowing insurrection, convincing a small but growing number of habitats to break away from the Glitter Band and form their own independent colonies.
I always enjoy Reynold's Revelation Space stories, and this one is good even if it rehashes a lot of the plot skeleton from another story.
Another solid entry in the Revelation Space universe, Elysium Fire lets the reader feel clever for figuring things out before the protagonists do, and then spins a little twist on top that nobody would have seen coming.
Part police procedural, part horror story, and all mind-bending, the story of Prefect Dreyfus and his acquaintances remains an interesting and intriguing one.
This book follows soon after the first Tom Dreyfus story. By this time, you're more familiar with the main characters, so you can explore their personalities a little further through the story. The story focuses on a new crisis that grips the Glitter Band, with a seemingly unrelated side story.
The emphasis in this story seemed to be more on Dreyfus, his two deputies, and the Supreme Prefect, than the underlying crisis. It felt like a bit of a reverse of the first Tom Dreyfus story in this respect, and made this book a little more sentimental than the first.
I like how Reynolds' books are a little edgier than other popular sci-fi books that I've read (not exactly a fair representation of sci-fi generally, though). This one didn't feel as edgy. Still, I enjoyed the book and was a little surprised to see that I finished it in about …
This book follows soon after the first Tom Dreyfus story. By this time, you're more familiar with the main characters, so you can explore their personalities a little further through the story. The story focuses on a new crisis that grips the Glitter Band, with a seemingly unrelated side story.
The emphasis in this story seemed to be more on Dreyfus, his two deputies, and the Supreme Prefect, than the underlying crisis. It felt like a bit of a reverse of the first Tom Dreyfus story in this respect, and made this book a little more sentimental than the first.
I like how Reynolds' books are a little edgier than other popular sci-fi books that I've read (not exactly a fair representation of sci-fi generally, though). This one didn't feel as edgy. Still, I enjoyed the book and was a little surprised to see that I finished it in about five days.
I reread The Prefect in preparation for Elysium Fire.
It is good to be back in Yellow Stone orbit.
Elysium Fire takes a more strait forward path through the glitter band than The Prefect, but still delivers a captivation tale.
I did feel like I was given too much information and not enough was left for the investigators to figure out.
Make sure to read The Prefect first. Reynolds doesn't spend much time on recaps.
