Machine Vendetta by Alastair Reynolds
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love the Prefect Dreyfus novels. It's a great blend of detective novel matching well with a high-tech belt of many hundreds of orbiting colonies in a system in Reynold's overall Revelation Space universe.

It is great because we get to see things at the calmest before the technoplague, but also because we see how they all lived at their so-called awesome SFnal height.

Not that things are all that calm or easy. A lot happened in the first two novels, but it may not be necessary to read those before picking up this one. It's pretty clear that the artificial (and one might say, derived human, advanced) intelligences are the biggest bads, or at some times, just really annoying. It's clear, however, that they are seriously formidable -- and one seems to have it bad for Dreyfus. :)

So very enjoyable. The worldbuilding is vast and complicated, but never a pain. The mystery is always the key, but the reveals are even more delicious.

Highly recommended for all you space-opera, hard-SF mystery fans.

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