/lit/ - Literature

>>22979027
Machine Vendetta, Prefect Dreyfus Emergency #3 / Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds (2024)

Six years have passed both in the real world and in-universe since the last book was published. From early on the characters begin referencing events from four years ago, a text search shows they directly do so twenty times throughout the book, and that confused me. Had I entirely forgotten what had happened and these characters? No, I hadn't, this was simply a case of Reynolds having a lot of stuff happen outside of the written story. The way it's presented though is as if the reader is already aware of everything. Usually when a book follows up from events that occurred it's something that happened in previous books. That's not the case here, as it's mostly a follow-up to the events of four years ago, which sought to resolve the Clockmaker and Aurora situation.

Tom Dreyfus and Thalia Ng are the two major perspectives, though there's a few other minor ones. This is probably one of the least convoluted books that Reynolds has written. It's almost entirely a straightforward investigation going from place to place and talking with people. Most of the thriller, survival, and action scenes are gone, as is much of the stuff from the wider Revelation Space series. Depending on your preferences this may be considered mundane, if not dull, because there isn't anything particularly exciting and certainly nothing epic. Yet, somehow it worked better for me than what the previous books did.

If you've read a few books from Reynolds before, you're aware that identity issues may be his favorite plot device. They're present here, but I think for first time Reynolds has a scene where he acknowledges and intervenes with the identity issues because he knows you're speculating about the identity of a character. The identity issues are eventually resolved in a way that could be considered divisive.

This is where I admit that I don't know what it is about this time, but for some reason I felt especially charitable about all the issues that would've otherwise bothered me. Others may feel the problems to be of greater severity, but unlike the previous books there wasn't anything here that lessened my enjoyment. There were several questionable narrative choices, but it seems I've become inured to them or maybe it was my mood.

I didn't notice it until I was doing text searches, but I realized whenever Ng is mentioned by itself I unconsciously replaced it with Thalia. This led to me wondering why she was always referred to by her first name while Dreyfus is almost always referred to by his last. Stuff like this has happened before.

The ending concludes Dreyfus's story and I'm satisfied with both that it has ended and how it has. It took some plot contrivances to get to this point, but apparently I don't mind.

Rating: 3.5/5 (4)

Previously in the series
>>/lit/?task=search2&search_text=Dreyfus+&search_tripcode=sffg&search_ord=old