Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds

Elysium Fire is a smoldering tale of murderers, secret cultists, tampered memories, and unthinkable power, of bottomless corruption and overpowering idealism from the king of modern space opera. 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.

Solid world building that continues to grow the Revelation Space universe and the characters also continue to develop, becoming more complex. Solid police procedural that also delves into identity, loss, grief and demagoguery.

A worthy sequel to an all-time favourite. A great blending of classic detective story, very current social commentary, and true thought-provoking science fiction equal to any of the greats of the genre.

I strongly recommend this series.

It's been a number of years since I read the first book in this series (although, as it happens still less than the gap between their publication dates...) and I found that I didn't remember much of it beyond the setting. Nonetheless, this does continue with plot elements from the previous book, and seems to be setting things up for a further one. Which hopefully, won't be another eight years coming.

The main story here is new, however, so my lack of recollection wasn't as big a problem as it might have been. The novel flips between Dreyfus investigating an apparent plague of unexplained deaths in the “present” and the childhood backstory of a man who is somehow connected with them. As the story goes on, the latter becomes more relevant to the former and elucidates some of what's going on that isn't apparent to the main viewpoint characters. Both include inventive detail, building on what was previously established in the first novel and the “present-day” parts include some dramatic moments as the situation becomes increasingly dire.

There are plenty of twists in the plot, and some of the questions of identity and the reliability of memory that have featured in other books by Reynolds. It's an enjoyable return to the universe of Revelation Space with a fast-paced and complex plot and some great ideas.