I have long been a fan of Alastair Reynolds, especially his Revelation Space universe. With The Prefect, we return to that universe and step back to a time before the events of the original trilogy of novels, in to a story set in the Glitter Band. Reyolds fans will have encountered this before – or rather, they will have encountered The Rust Belt, which by the time of later volumes is all that is left of the 10,000 diverse and fantastic habitats orbiting the planet of Yellowstone that make up the Glitter Band. Echoing the approach Reynolds first explored in Century Rain, The Prefect is a cross between hard SF and police procedural, and it’s a combination that works much better this time around, perhaps thanks to the familiar trappings of the Revelation Space framework – Conjoiners, Ultras, Demarchists, Shrouders and the rest.

The Prefect of the title is Tom Dreyfus, an experienced field officer for Panoply, the small police force that is responsible for ensuring the continued fairness of democracy in the habitats of the Glitter Band – up here, votes are going on constantly, and Panoply’s main job is to ensure they are free of interference, and that everyone has a chance to vote. Panoply may not interfere with the internal affairs of the habitats – which range from artistic communes, to manufactories, to Voluntary Tyrannies, to shelves full of decapitated heads who spend their lives hooked up to the giant data network of the Glitter Band like a bizarre cross between The Matrix and Futurama. In the diversity of the lifestyle choices available to the citizens of the habitats, Reyolds echoes Iain M. Banks’ Culture Universe to some extent, though as usual, Reynolds’ version is bleaker, and positive progress is far from inevitable.

Along with his deputies, the inexperienced Thalia Ng and the hyperpig Sparver, Dryefus quickly becomes embroiled in complex investigation – while the murder of an entire habitat initially appears to be a cut-and-dried case of a business deal with Ultras that has gone sour, they discover that there are far more factors in play. The emergence of a machine intelligence trying to take over the Glitter Band leads to all kinds of strange discoveries – traitors within Panoply, long-hidden secrets, and a theat to the entire orbital civilisation. The only possible solution lies with the entity that caused the last major crisis, The Clockmaker, and Dreyfus and Panoply have to make some seriously hard choices if they are going to avoid disaster. In the process, Dreyfus has to reappraise his understanding of the Clockmaker crisis.

Reynolds’ imaginaton is as active as ever. The technological ideas he introduces are often very clever – to maintain his security clearance, Dreyfus has to to take regular injections of the drug Pangolin – without it, anything classified becomes meaningless and illegible; the multi-purpose weapons used by the Prefects, called Whip Hounds, are sinister but vital for a police force banned from carrying guns. The setting for The Prefect precludes Reynolds from getting in to his trademark deep space chase sequences, but that’s not really a bad thing, and the technology, for me, never overwhelmed a plot which is fundamentally driven by human needs and emotions.

It’s a complex plot, with plenty of backstory – while it’s useful to have read the previous books, it’s by no means essential – and Reynolds handles the strands deftly, ratcheting up the pace and the tension as the book progresses. If The Prefect was solely a stand-alone novel, then I might say the end was every so slightly anti-climactic – but I have a strong suspicion Reynolds will return to the Glitter Band in the future, in which case we are very well set up for the next volume. As per usual, the characterisation is not the strongest element of the book, though I think it’s improving – in particular, I think we need a clearer sense of the differences between baseline humans and hyperpigs, beyond the purely physiological. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this book a great deal, and might go so far as to say it’s Reynolds’ best to date. Recommended.

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