Just one book this week! Well, it was well-worth reading so “just” is the wrong word, I suppose. I have been to the Library this afternoon and now have twelve books in my pile – it looks so lovely. All that reading material; all those words, dreams, imaginary people and places; all that escape!

Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds

My one book was Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds. Here is the blurb:

Ten thousand city-state habitats orbit the planet Yellowstone, forming a near-perfect democratic human paradise.

But even utopia needs a police force. For the citizens of the Glitter Band that organization is Panoply, and the prefects are its operatives.

Prefect Tom Dreyfus has a new emergency on his hands. Across the habitats and their hundred million citizens, people are dying suddenly and randomly, victims of a bizarre and unprecedented malfunction of their neural implants. And these “melters” leave no clues behind as to the cause of their deaths…

As panic rises in the populace, a charismatic figure is sowing insurrection, convincing a small but growing number of habitats to break away from the Glitter Band and form their own independent colonies.

I realised that this was actually #02 in a series, Prefect Dreyfus Emergency, but it was reasonably OK to treat it as a stand-alone story. There were enough hints about the previous book to set the plot and characters in context. Anyway, this is my four star review from Goodreads:

I really did enjoy this! I haven’t read a book by Reynolds before but, after finishing this one, I have just reserved two more via our Library’s online catalogue. This was a great, meaty and fascinating science fiction read, set in an amazingly realised world (or set of worlds and “habitats) with intriguing future technology.

From the beginning two stories appear to run in parallel: one, an exciting crime/mystery type plot; the other the tale of two boys growing up in an isolated place. The characters involved are compelling and new developments in the plot appear at just the right intervals to keep the reader both engaged and gripped. After reading other reviews, it appears that I have stumbled upon a set of interlocking book series that will keep me going for a long time.

I just hope that the Library in this county has them all in stock!

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

I have almost finished another book, but not in enough time to add it to this post, so I will write about it next week: Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik.

Happy Reading and best wishes to you all!

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