Review of The Prefect,
A Novel by Alastair Reynolds
By Ernest G. Saylor

Imagine, if you will, a perfect democracy. A democracy where there is no centralized government, where every citizen votes independently on nearly everything. Each habitat (of which there are 10,000 comprising the Glitter Band) is a unique social system, yet all share the common right to vote accomplished through a centralized network simply referred to as The Abstraction.  In many cases this network is connected cybernetically to every citizens' brain, and everything and anything is subject to continuous polling. Each habitat decides its own politics, laws and manner of living. In this future Golden Age of absolute democracy (demarchism) the worst crime is to withhold a person’s right to vote or to tamper with the votes themselves. The responsibility to protect these rights and make certain every citizen is afforded them rests upon the shoulders of Panoply, an order of enforcers armed with a unique and versatile weapon called a whiphound.

The Panoply chain-of-command is as follows: Cadet - Prefect in training; Prefect - Neophyte Prefect, in-house duties only; Field Prefect - Prefects experienced enough to police the Glitter Band; Senior Prefect – Experienced Field Prefects serving mostly as administrators; Supreme Prefect - Jane Aumonier.

It is 2427 in the keenly constructed universe of Revelation Space, well before the events of Chasm City, and in the seemingly highest order of human civilization a great crime has been committed. A lighthugger (a colossal starship) has attacked a habitat killing every citizen. Field Prefect Dreyfus and his team have been assigned to investigate and a delightful, fast paced, and incredibly thoughtful adventure begins. This is action-adventure come detective mystery come Hard SF novel not to be missed. The characters are extremely well conceived and brilliantly developed. With every twist and turn of the plot Reynolds reels you in like a hypnotized bass. All of the trademark elements that validate him as being amongst the best working SF writers today are present. The twisted and deviant villains and sub surface motives and schemes.

I asked Alastair Reynolds back in May of 2006 what made him return to the Universe of Revelation Space and he wrote

“After two books away from the Revelation Space universe, I felt that the time was right for me to return to it. I really felt that Absolution Gap was the last word on the matter, but by the time I'd written the new stories for the Galactic North collection, I felt a lot more excited about the idea of doing another RS book. It's sufficiently different in tone and approach that it feels like something new - to me, at least. It's got nothing of the gothic/noir sensibility of the first four books, being a lot more high-tech and hard-edged, with loads of cool gadgets and nasty weapons.”

I loved it, and I highly recommend this wonderful epic!