The Prefect started out rough for me. The characterization was shoddy through the opening act -- the only female viewpoint character, Thalia Ng, was also the only character who seemed to feel any emotion at all, and as she was mainly nervous and afraid her emotions undercut my respect for her as a prefect -- especially as the other prefects whose viewpoints Reynolds showed all appeared calm, cool, collected, and totally in control. There were also moments where Reynolds forced the characters to have totally artificial-feeling conversations to provide important information to the reader -- not quite conversations of the "Well, as you know, Bill, the Glitter Band is a string of 10,000 habitats circling the planet Yellowstone" variety, but close.
The imaginative scope of The Prefect fell shy for me in the beginning as well. All the best bits of imaginative work had been covered in previous novels set in this universe -- the Ultras and their ships are very minor characters, the Glitter Band and Chasm City are just there as backdrop, and no real prose is spent going over any of their wonders. The only new bits of imagination are expended on the four habitats that Thalia visits by herself, and they seemed surprisingly juvenile creations -- one consists of people who have given up most of their physical bodies in favor of a total life of the mind, so when they need to walk around they are merely heads in boxes; another is made up of people who have modelled their bodies after various animals and engage in violent jousting tournaments full of claws and teeth, fur and feathers. That imagery has been done before, and Reynolds himself seemed bored with it, as he switched away from Thalia's perspective after he set each of those habitats up and didn't return to her until she was done dealing with them.
But as soon as Thalia arrived at House Aubusson, the novel started picking up speed. That habitat did show some of Reynolds' usual imagination, and its role in the complicated Demarchist voting system was fascinating to me. And shortly after that point, the final showdown began, and the book started racing towards its finish line. From that point I was glued to the page, feeling the tension rising and worrying my own brain at the problem of coming up with a solution to the threat bearing down on Panoply and the Glitter Band.
Unfortunately, that point was only 180 pages into a 563 page novel. There is no way for any author to maintain a feverish intensity for the entire last two-thirds. The only way to pace a novel of that length is to have a mini-climax somewhere in the middle, a ramping down of the tension, and then a second, higher escalation for the true climax at the end. Reynolds had no mini-climax, no ramping down and then re-escalation, so though I raced through the middle section, by the time the story was starting to draw to a close I (and the narrative) was losing steam. The ending itself was a bit too much of a deus ex machina resolution for my taste (quite literally, actually), and the emotional story arc for Dreyfus simply never connected enough for me for that to be justification for reading the almost 600 pages.
So ultimately, I would recommend this novel to anyone who's read the other Revelation Space novels because it does fill in some of the back story on the Glitter Band, but anyone who has never tried Reynolds before would be much better off starting with the original trilogy (Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, and Absolution Gap), which has much more impressive hard SF imaginings (I miss the Nostalgia for Infinity!) or with the other semi-standalone novel, Chasm City, which has a much better mystery.
The imaginative scope of The Prefect fell shy for me in the beginning as well. All the best bits of imaginative work had been covered in previous novels set in this universe -- the Ultras and their ships are very minor characters, the Glitter Band and Chasm City are just there as backdrop, and no real prose is spent going over any of their wonders. The only new bits of imagination are expended on the four habitats that Thalia visits by herself, and they seemed surprisingly juvenile creations -- one consists of people who have given up most of their physical bodies in favor of a total life of the mind, so when they need to walk around they are merely heads in boxes; another is made up of people who have modelled their bodies after various animals and engage in violent jousting tournaments full of claws and teeth, fur and feathers. That imagery has been done before, and Reynolds himself seemed bored with it, as he switched away from Thalia's perspective after he set each of those habitats up and didn't return to her until she was done dealing with them.
But as soon as Thalia arrived at House Aubusson, the novel started picking up speed. That habitat did show some of Reynolds' usual imagination, and its role in the complicated Demarchist voting system was fascinating to me. And shortly after that point, the final showdown began, and the book started racing towards its finish line. From that point I was glued to the page, feeling the tension rising and worrying my own brain at the problem of coming up with a solution to the threat bearing down on Panoply and the Glitter Band.
Unfortunately, that point was only 180 pages into a 563 page novel. There is no way for any author to maintain a feverish intensity for the entire last two-thirds. The only way to pace a novel of that length is to have a mini-climax somewhere in the middle, a ramping down of the tension, and then a second, higher escalation for the true climax at the end. Reynolds had no mini-climax, no ramping down and then re-escalation, so though I raced through the middle section, by the time the story was starting to draw to a close I (and the narrative) was losing steam. The ending itself was a bit too much of a deus ex machina resolution for my taste (quite literally, actually), and the emotional story arc for Dreyfus simply never connected enough for me for that to be justification for reading the almost 600 pages.
So ultimately, I would recommend this novel to anyone who's read the other Revelation Space novels because it does fill in some of the back story on the Glitter Band, but anyone who has never tried Reynolds before would be much better off starting with the original trilogy (Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, and Absolution Gap), which has much more impressive hard SF imaginings (I miss the Nostalgia for Infinity!) or with the other semi-standalone novel, Chasm City, which has a much better mystery.
What its about - the adventures of Tom Dreyfus, field prefect for the Panopoly. A sort of combined police, military, communications monopoly, traffic control and voting rights organization for the Glitter Band of Yellowstone. What the Panopoly does is safeguard the right of the Demarchist (democratic anarchist) citizens to vote in polls of the system. The penalties for tampering with the vote are harsh - entire space habitats are isolated physically and through the networks for years for tampering with voters' rights.
The novel opens with Dreyfus and his team of deputy field prefects doing just that at the habitat of House Perigal. From there, a glitch in the polling system is uncovered and an entirely separate habtitat has been destroyed with no survivors. Then the book really takes off.
The stakes for the novel are high - millions of lives are at stake. And the ideological consequences are high as well, with the possible destruction of the Demarchy and the betrayal of it by one of its guardians.
OK, this is revisit to Yellowstone from Chasm City and Revelation Space, Diamond Dogs and Turquoise as well as from short stories in Galactic North. Still, its an awful lot of fun. As readers we get to see the Glitter Band before it became the Rust Belt after the melding plague. Reynolds also throws around concepts that are a blast. Ubiquitous virtual reality (the inscape), how the demarchy works, the nonvelope and whip hounds (semi autonomous weapon systems that are a cross between a flexibody vehicle, a sharpened whip and a vibroblade). He also revisits the hyperpigs with Sparver Bancal, one of Dreyfus' deputies.
So, how is it? Pretty good. Its a fast read of the SF action genre with elements of conspiracy and police procedural thrown in. Dreyfus is a bit of an impossible to me - too idealistic, but what do I know? I honestly liked Sparver the hyperpig more and would have enjoyed seeing more from his viewpoint. I also would have liked to see more of the traitor, especially his being convinced to do what he does. Reynolds glosses that over, and rightly so since it took place years in the past. Still...
Anyway, fun book. Go read it. Enjoy it.
The novel opens with Dreyfus and his team of deputy field prefects doing just that at the habitat of House Perigal. From there, a glitch in the polling system is uncovered and an entirely separate habtitat has been destroyed with no survivors. Then the book really takes off.
The stakes for the novel are high - millions of lives are at stake. And the ideological consequences are high as well, with the possible destruction of the Demarchy and the betrayal of it by one of its guardians.
OK, this is revisit to Yellowstone from Chasm City and Revelation Space, Diamond Dogs and Turquoise as well as from short stories in Galactic North. Still, its an awful lot of fun. As readers we get to see the Glitter Band before it became the Rust Belt after the melding plague. Reynolds also throws around concepts that are a blast. Ubiquitous virtual reality (the inscape), how the demarchy works, the nonvelope and whip hounds (semi autonomous weapon systems that are a cross between a flexibody vehicle, a sharpened whip and a vibroblade). He also revisits the hyperpigs with Sparver Bancal, one of Dreyfus' deputies.
So, how is it? Pretty good. Its a fast read of the SF action genre with elements of conspiracy and police procedural thrown in. Dreyfus is a bit of an impossible to me - too idealistic, but what do I know? I honestly liked Sparver the hyperpig more and would have enjoyed seeing more from his viewpoint. I also would have liked to see more of the traitor, especially his being convinced to do what he does. Reynolds glosses that over, and rightly so since it took place years in the past. Still...
Anyway, fun book. Go read it. Enjoy it.
