Machine Vendetta: 3 (The Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies)

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I guess the first thing to note is that this book is set in a broad and encompassing universe that Alistair Reynolds has created. A sequel to Elysium Fire, it is the eighth novel set in the Revelation Space universe, and the third in the A Prefect Dreyfus Emergency spinoff series. Reynolds achieves a masterful blend of mystery/police procedural, hard sci-fi, intrigue and action, all within the fascinating far future world of a distributed and loosely federated human civilization often barely recognizable as such due to radical genetic and/or cybernetic engineering.

To complicate this febrile situation further, elements from the past have come back to haunt the characters. 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. Banks, I really appreciated the aspect of sophisticated agents using high technology, intelligence, and courage to "do the right thing". It's fun to see more stories set in the Glitter Band and also to be reminded why the Revelation Space Universe is the worst place ever to live. 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.I would recommend the book to people who enjoy the science in science fiction and really enjoy a detailed and rich future world.

Reynolds again doesn't disappoint and proves while he is a master of the sci Fi genre and an author I always look forward to. How Alastair Reynolds creates not only a galaxy but a complex and multi prong plot that satisfies completely is beyond me! This is the third, and probably last, of the Prefect Dreyfus stories that Reynolds has crafted in his Revelation Space universe but in a different time period.A mix of hard science with space opera, big ideas, and again characters that readers want to know more about. One can have ships move at hyperspace or travel wormholes, treating space like World War II fighters, or have lumbering near light transports taking years to get to their location. Rogue Artificial Intelligence; genetic engineering; cloning; post-humanism; hubristic families; found (or orchestrated) family; all of these themes are essentially and magnificently interwoven, and always, always, the overweening theme is Doing the Right Thing.

I don't know if this is a counterpoint to some of the police abuse stories we've seen recently, but it's hard not to see it as such. A prefect who happens to be a hyperpig (an uplifted pig functioning alongside humans) has apparently betrayed his office and staged a suicide attack on one habitat.I would say that it is similar to and Ed McBain 87th Precinct novel, with a cast of police agents investigating a serious of what look like random crimes, and finding that they are all the same. Prematurely writing this review because I started it on Netgalley without realizing that it is the 3rd book of a series.