Elysium Fire continues Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies in Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space setting -- and Machine Vendetta ends them, for the time being, at least. The expected Melding Plague didn't show up yet so I'm thinking Reynolds might still visit the Panoply's continuing duty to defend democracy in the Glitter Band, even if Tom Dreyfus was implied to have exited stage left. But who knows.
Elysium Fire
Previously in The Prefect/Aurora Rising, the plans of the titular alpha-level human mind simulation Aurora were warded off when another equally smart and malevolent AI, the Clockmaker, got unleashed to battle with the former for supremacy. Both scattered off, decentralizing themselves around the Glitter Band's networks and systems. Essentially the can just got kicked down the road.
The AIs' ongoing battle isn't in much of a role in this novel, although Aurora does appear every now and then to haunt Dreyfus. Instead Dreyfus and the other prefects are investigating an accelerating series of incidents of implants frying up seemingly random citizens of the Band. The Panoply tries to keep it under wraps to prevent panic.
Meanwhile, in the wake of the Aurora incident, a civilian named Devon Garlin is undermining the prefects' authority. He tours the Band from habitat to habitat, encouraging them to declare independence. Dreyfus suspects Garlin is somehow connected to the implant troubles but has no clue of their true relation until it's eventually uncovered.
A separate narrative follows two young brothers and scions of one of the system's powerful families. The Voi family is very well known in the Glitter Band for it was Sandra Voi back in the day whom is to thank for the implants, the habitats' polling cores, the abstraction: the whole absolute democratic system. People even use Voi in exclamations, which in a Finnish translation is amusing due to the amount of puns it creates: in Finnish, 'voi' means butter as well as: oh/ah/alas. In the following novel, there's a gem of a lament: "Voi Voi."
The brilliancy of the Voi implants includes them having proven to be completely hack-proof. Thus initially the Panoply tries to find if the victims have been installed with faulty implants with countdowns or something; the possibility of someone hacking into Voi implants isn't seriously followed.
The separate narrative soon reveals to the reader that the Vois have a big, inherited family secret: the abstraction has a backdoor that allows the current head(s) of the Voi family to control the whole voting system. The intention seems benevolent: an absolute democracy can vote to end itself, and the Vois don't believe that is right. With little, unnoticeable nudges, the family has been steering the Glitter Band away from hazardous societal climates.
Elysium Fire's mystery was an intriguing read but the climax fizzled out. I would've wanted more debate on the ethics of someone being able to secretly guide a democracy. The Voi perspective kind of got disqualified because the last heirs were not fit for the role. And so the Panoply will continue serving and protecting the absolute democracy until -- or when -- the democracy decides to vote for itself to end.
Machine Vendetta
In the trilogy finisher, Aurora and the Clockmaker (which translated is the Finnish title for the novel) finally get to clash but the problem doesn't get fully resolved in this one either: half of the can still remains there, down the road.
In the novel's prologue, there is a brief viewpoint character Ingvar Tench, a veteran field prefect who has declined promotions like Dreyfus. She is also a woman despite the male first name -- Reynolds doing it again. Tench is being led into a trap yet to Panoply it seems she has gone rogue. And Tench is not the only prefect to have done so recently: prefect Thalia Ng is investigating why another prefect recently opened fire against a habitat before its defense systems took his ship out.
The story is more about Panoply's problems than the AIs trying to overcome each other. It seems like prefects have a chronic tendency to become overzealous, refusing to turn away from a task they've been assigned to, even if it means going against fellow prefects. The first novel already had such a plot point and in this one it gets even more implausible.
Machine Vendetta is pretty much void of new ideas; Dreyfus's adventures might have gone too long. It's disappointing how Thalia had negligible character growth over three whole books and also how Reynolds for no real reason killed off the best character -- once again.
It's pretty rare in a book to see a dedication from its translator that is not strictly work related but having your wife pass away is probably a very acceptable occasion to do so. Although she also apparently did proofread too for Hannu Tervaharju who's been the translator for these many Reynolds books. Machine Vendetta is currently Reynolds's latest novel -- it came out last year -- but I still have a handful of his older works left to read.
No comments:
Post a Comment