Machine Vendetta - Alastair Reynolds

Picking up the pace a little - the first Prefect Dreyfus novel The Prefect was published in 2008 and later repackaged as Aurora Rising in preparation for the continuation of the series in 2018 with the second book Elysium Fire. Machine Vendetta looks to be the third and final part of the series, and if it ends here, it wraps up the trilogy rather neatly, following through on some of the underlying issues and wider problems being dealt with by the law-enforcement service for the Glitter Band, the Panoply.

The Panoply are not so much a law-enforcement authority however as a kind of federal agency that ensures that the democratic process of polling cores on each of the thousands of habitats in the Glitter Band around Yellowstone are not tampered with in any way. Outside of that, the habitats have their own autonomy and Panoply only intervene when there is a serious matter that violates the Common Articles and could impact on other habitats. Not everyone accepts their authority but most know better than to defy them, or worse, provoke and threaten them. Someone however had lured Prefect Ingvar Tench to the unstable Stadler-Kremeniev habitat, not the destination she believed she was heading, and she is in big trouble. Prefect Dreyfus has been sent to find out what has happened to her.

It's not the only threat that the Panoply faces that challenges their authority. Another habitat has apparently been attacked in a suicide mission by another Panoply agent, which is a cause of great concern, but also - in a hangover from the first two books in the series - the struggle for dominance of two competing and immensely powerful Artificial Intelligences is raising its head again, which is really big trouble for everyone. I need hardly say that what we know not about the concept of AI, information capture and machine learning has made great leaps since Alastair Reynolds started writing about Panoply's run-ins with machine intelligences in this series in 2008. He was ahead of the curve there, but it's catching up fast and the implications of it are now more of a reality in our own universe. The idea of an Aurora or a Clockmaker is no longer such a fanciful idea, but it's still a thrilling one with huge implications as far as Machine Vendetta is concerned.

The third book in the series however gets off to a rather low-key start. There are those worrying incidents involving Panoply agents and the threat of Aurora and Clockmaker clearly hasn't gone away - but you wouldn't expect it to, nor would you expect simply a replay of the previous two Prefect Dreyfus books. If it starts slowly with a lot of investigation and not much in the way of major reveals or even promising developments, you can be sure that things will heat up considerably. That's something to look forward to as long as it follows the trajectory of Aurora Rising and doesn't have the disappointing Bond villain ending of Elysium Fire. Machine Vendetta it turns out, while fitting perfectly as a third part of the series, has its own character.

Rather than pulp SF that you might expect, Reynolds treats this one as more of a police detective thriller, which seems reasonable considering the policing role of Panoply in the system. The suspicious deaths involving Panoply agents just don't add up, but at the same time there is nothing - or nothing much - to suggest that they are anything other than what they appear to be; the actions of a couple of rogue officers. Relying as much on instinct as anything but also a belief in his character judgement of his colleagues, Dreyfus at least has the experience and trust of his superior Jane Aumonier to let him go digging a little deeper. And he has a rookie agent along with him on this one, one who is just a bit too over-eager. You can expect thriller twists and revelations then amidst all the SF action.

Despite occasionally tipping over into rather implausible stage managed conclusions, Alastair Reynolds is still the best space adventure science-fiction writer out there now as far as I'm concerned. Along with the late (and sometimes equally inconsistent) Iain M. Banks, I would never fail to read everything they publish. Like Banks, Reynolds is the whole package in terms of the the originality of his vision, the universe he has created and the thrilling adventures that take place there. Reynolds is also strong on the characterisation, writing believable characters, dialogue and situations, and doing it with insight and wit. Combine that with a thrilling pulp SF/detective adventure and Machine Vendetta is a joy to read. Where the charm of his last series, the Revenger trilogy wore off quickly, this one is more of a return to form and a wonderful conclusion to an excellent series.

Reading notes: Machine Vendetta, book three of the Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies series was published by Gollancz in January 2024 in hardcover and eBook editions. The mass market paperback version is due out in September 2024. I read the Kindle edition.