What's odd about this book is that it starts with an explanation of Yellowstone and the Glitter Band which would have been much better placed before Aurora Rising -- which the lack thereof was my one and only absolute criticism of that book.   It's a bit late to put the info dump that one needs in the first Prefect Dreyfus book at the front of the second Prefect Dreyfus book.

Anyway, that aside, this is a superb book that totally builds on Aurora Rising, with all our favourite characters, good and bad, and some new ones too.   And it's huge too, so huge but so unputdownable that i kept skipping my evening meditation session to keep reading this for a while longer and then staying awake a little past sleepy time too.

Excellently written, excellent characters, just excellent all round.

And up next it's Diamond Dogs. ( )

The Glitter Band is a collection of 10,000 city-state habitats orbiting the planet of Yellowstone, existing in near-perfect democracy, with that democracy guarded by Panoply and its prefects. Prefect Tom Dreyfus has faced crises before, and overcome them.

There's a new crisis building, an outbreak of strange, unexplained deaths. People are suddenly dying of the malfunction and overheating of their neural implants. There are seemingly no connections, no similarities, in the victims to point the way to the cause. While the deaths are few and scattered at first, the deaths are rising exponentially. Rumors are starting spread, risking an even more deadly outbreak of panic.

There's fallout from the previous crisis, two years ago, in which some habitats were destroyed as part of the effort to stop the spread of a destructive artificial intelligence. A separatist movement has grown up, though so far only a few habitats have actually seceded from the Glitter Band. Now, though, an activist called Devon Garland has been traveling from habitat to habitat, giving rabble-rousing speeches telling people that Panoply isn't protecting them, but its own power and influence.

Dreyfus tries to raise concern about Garland among his colleagues, without success. Soon Garland is targeting him personally in his speeches, and showing up in places he shouldn't know Dreyfus would be. In pursuit of answers, Dreyfus is interviewing the only "witnesses" he has, the betas of those who have died of the "melter" phenomenon, and simultaneously chasing down information on Devon Garland and his background.

Meanwhile, Dreyfus's friends and deputy field prefects, Thalia Ng and Sparver Bancal, are sent off on a mission of their own, to check out the latest melter death, and get caught in "just an accident" that is awfully questionable, and kills an innocent witness. As evidence builds, the two crises start to look like one, and Dreyfus, Thalia, and Sparver all go through conflicts and stresses that alter their own views of themselves and each other.

It's exciting, though-provoking, and has real character development.

I received this audiobook as a gift. ( )

I kinda wish I had read the book rather than listened to the audiobook. It would have been fine except that I was trying to listen to it later in the evening after I had come home from work and I kept falling asleep with the earphones on.

I also did not like the voice of this particular narrator so just 3 stars from me this time.

Otherwise, the story was great. I loved The Prefect and this sequel was just as good. At some point though I will need to re-read it so that I can enjoy it more....and stop listening to audiobooks when I am too tired. ( )

I adore Prefect Dreyfus, Sparver the hyper-pig and all the cast at Panoply as well as the conceit of the 'detective' story (he is more than that, of course) in the far future in space, which is, being inhabited by humans, vulnerable to the bad guy, full of innovations and venom. Not quite as fun as the first one but still plenty fun. I was less absorbed in the back story although I don't know how that was unavoidable and the two threads past and future came together reasonably well. I had figured some stuff out but not all. **** ( )

"Two psychotic ghosts, locked in an endless stalemate": Reynolds returns with another space opera police procedural set in the Glitter Band, an artificial ring system of numerous habitats revolving around the planet Yellowstone. The Glitter Band is a direct democracy on a mass scale, and citizens employ cybernetic means to participate constantly in the policymaking process. This time, the specter of political fragmentation haunts the Band. Somewhat transparently, the ostensible antagonist is a yellow-haired populist who urges habitats to "take back control" and withdraw from the Band's unique form of self-government. Meanwhile, a kind of plague grows in the background. Much of the procedural here addresses the anxieties and details of exponential growth curves, projected mortality rates, etc. But the story turns around the antagonist's own strange and fragmented backstory. A tyrant never really has agential unity, after all. Late in the novel, one of the spaceships is called the Democratic Circus. Its name, perhaps, captures the quivering anxiety that animates the plot.