I Read Books: Elysium Fire

 

Elysium Fire

A sequel to The Prefect (which in later editions was re/additionally titled Aurora Rising). In the wake of the fallout of the previous novel some habitats in the Glitter Band, ten-thousand space stations in orbit around the planet Yellowstone, have chosen to secede and no longer fall under the authority of the prefects of Panoply. At the head of the secession movement is Devlin Garlin who prefect Tom Dreyfuss has a run in with.

That’s the least of their problems. The Glitter Band runs by neural implants that amongst other things have voting systems, which control the governance. Several dozen people have died when their neural implants ran wild, overheating, destroying the implants and cooking their brains. Dreyfuss’s protegee Ng is called in, and has to decapitate a corpse and put the head in a preservation bag.

There’s a third strand; two boys being brought up by the Voi family, the descendants of Sandra Voi. The voting software and Demarchy were made by her in the backstory, and there are secrets behind them.

Read This: A far future crime thriller
Don’t Read This: You aren’t interested in this corner of the Revelation Space universe