Elysium Fire, Alastair Reynolds
Elysium Fire, Alastair Reynolds
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Elysium Fire

Author: Alastair Reynolds

Narrator: John Lee

Unabridged: 17 hr 49 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Orbit

Published: 01/23/2018


Synopsis

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.

About Alastair Reynolds

Born in Barry, South Wales, Alastair Reynolds studied at Newcastle University and the University of St. Andrews. A former astrophysicist for the European Space Agency, he now writes full-time. He is the author of many short stories and twelve novels, including Chasm City, winner of the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel, and House of Suns.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Bradley on December 23, 2017

Alastair Reynolds returns to the Revelation Space universe with the strongest novel *IMHO* since The Prefect. Of course, this is a direct follow-up to The Prefect. Look, I know that's kinda a toss out statement, but it's still true. I loved The Prefect because it went wild with tech and even wilder p......more

Goodreads review by Barbara on January 16, 2024

The premise of this science fiction series is that humans have colonized thousands of different habitats in a region called the Glitter Band, and - to maintain democratic governance in these habitats - everybody 'votes' via a neural implant in their head. A police force called the Panoply, with agen......more

Goodreads review by Scott on March 21, 2018

Elysium Fire is good. Damned good. Reynolds at his best is so much fun that reading him feels like it should be a guilty pleasure, something to greedily gorge on in the shadowy recesses of one's home or from behind the camouflage of some worthy literary magazine on the train. His work is no pulpy-SF......more


Quotes

"This novel's ideas are mind-stretching, including a limbo where copies of the dead can be kept and interrogated, and a chillingly mischievous AI that tempts and mocks Dreyfus. The big concepts and complex story effectively pull readers into intriguing speculation about human identity and potential."—Publishers Weekly

"Reynolds combines depth in characterization and dazzling hard-science applications to keep the reader turning pages."—Booklist

"Elysium Fire is a tremendously assured read, a fast-paced page-turner that delivers a well thought out story and characters you'll come to care about."—The Guardian (UK)

"A swashbuckling thriller--Pirates of the Caribbean meets Firefly--that nevertheless combines the author's trademark hard SF with effective, coming-of-age characterization."—The Guardian on Revenger

"Revenger is classic Reynolds-that is to say, top of the line science fiction, where characters are matched beautifully with ideas and have to find their place in a complex future. More!"—Greg Bear on Revenger

"A leading light of the new British space opera."
Los Angeles Review of Books on Alastair Reynolds

"One of the giants of the new British space opera."
io9 on Alastair Reynolds

"[Reynolds is] a mastersinger of the space opera."
The Times (UK) on Blue Remembered Earth

"Heir to writers like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, Reynolds keeps up the tradition of forward thinking... An immensely thrilling, mind-bending piece of work."
AV Club on House of Suns

"[Reynolds] is the most gifted hard SF writers working today."
Publishers Weekly on Beyond the Aquila Rift