Machine Vendetta is the recently released Alastair Reynolds novel feature Prefect Dreyfus. As far as I can tell it's the last book in the trilogy featuring the Panoply and the Glitter Band in the Revelation Space universe. It's the first book in recent years that no longer has a jacked up kindle price since before Apple got involved in price fixing with various publishers, and at $9.99 I used some of my kindle credits and didn't bother with waiting for the library.
The plot revolves around the murder of two prefects, both previously exemplary, performing what seems to be suicidal acts. One of them is Ingvar Tench, a close friend of Tom Dreyfus, and she turns out to have a previously unknown daughter! This is by far the weakest part of the plot, requiring the rest of the police force to believe that she had a daughter at an improbable time while devoting unlimited time to her career.
The rest of the plot is great. We have battling AIs vying for dominance over humanity, a final resolution to the plot of the first novel in the series, lots of police procedural work in addition to the exciting action-filled betrayals and crisis. This book could be turned into a high budget science fiction movie and it would be fun to watch.
Alastair Reynolds is in my auto-buy list. The science in his science fiction is great, his characters are much more 3-dimensional than you would expect from science fiction, and while he has plot weaknesses if you can get over them the reading is just compelling. I finished this book over 3-4 days and it was fun!
Recommended!
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