The Prefect (Gollancz SF)

published	2007 by Gollancz
binding	Hardcover
isbn	0575077166 (isbn13: 9780575077164)
pages	512
date added	02-10-07 edit book

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Michael rated it:

06/24/08

bookshelves: sf

Read in June, 2008

I'd been avoiding Alastair Reynolds since having read Revelation Space and having been distinctly unimpressed. But after seeing a number of glowing reviews, I thought I'd give him another shot.

And The Prefect is... better. The story is relatively tight and well-plotted. As with Revelation Space, the main plot ends in an abrupt and literal deus ex machina, but the side plots are more satisfying. The climax of the story is well-told and kept me up late. The setting is...more I'd been avoiding Alastair Reynolds since having read Revelation Space and having been distinctly unimpressed. But after seeing a number of glowing reviews, I thought I'd give him another shot.

And The Prefect is... better. The story is relatively tight and well-plotted. As with Revelation Space, the main plot ends in an abrupt and literal deus ex machina, but the side plots are more satisfying. The climax of the story is well-told and kept me up late. The setting is interesting and well-described.

Still, The Prefect is riddled with enough problems that it severely impacts my enjoyment of the book (enough so that I'm torn between two and three stars). The writing is strangely uneven: usually, it's flowing along in the competent-and-unintrusive way that seems to be the style that most sci-fi authors aim for, and then you'll these really jarring, clumsy elements. For example, a conversation is taking place with minimal narrative intrusion, and then all of a sudden, the author feels the need to tell you that one of the characters doesn't believe the other. It's clumsy and unconfident, telling and not showing, and it's made more noticeable in a book that largely does seem to trust its ability to make clear to a reader what's going on without explaining every last detail.

Another thing which bothered me was the way that the protagonists and antagonists seemed to be the only people who had any agency. In a fairly late scene, one of the antagonists tries to break out of a large, secure police facility on high alert, when he's fairly badly injured, using nothing more than one of the weapons that everyone else in the facility carries, after announcing his intentions to the hierarchy of the station. And he not only succeeds, he appears to succeed effortlessly: it's not even described. Really? I know that all of the protagonists are doing other things, but that really works?

I know that the author is suggesting that decadence and complacency have weakened this society, but, to me, he didn't sell it. I saw the hand of the author shepherding the characters from one scene to the next.

So, all in all, I actually more or less enjoyed the book, but I think I'll let Reynolds pick up another few years of writing craft before I take another stab at one of his....less

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The Prefect (Gollancz SF)

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