Aurora Rising

Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a police officer with The Panoply, the organisation patrolling an association of inhabited asteroids called the Glitterband. Somebody has blown up one of the habitats with the loss of hundreds of lives. Dreyfus is sent to investigate.

The story soon turns into more than a murder investigation. The most obvious suspect looks to have been set up. But by who? And what reason made such loss of life worth it? And so the mysterious presence of Aurora slowly emerges. But Aurora is not the normal super-villain trying to take over the whole of civilisation. Aurora was killed decades ago, and this resurrection speaks of a darker threat.

Very soon Dreyfus finds himself pursuing a distributed AI intent on bringing down the Glitterband's governance. And with more investigation it seems there is a second AI that is looming with a totally different threat to them all.

This is a fast paced story with high stakes and an equally high body count. The attack by Aurora is ruthless, and so must be the response against her. Dreyfus sees a possible ally against Aurora but convincing him to join the war puts him in mortal danger.

The book ends at a suitable point but there is much left to be picked up by a sequel.

I was pretty surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. Alastair Reynolds name is one I've heard come up before, but never investigated, so I'm glad my book club keyed me into this one. The story is a sort of noir space opera, and the writing is sharp and even funny at times. It maybe has a few too many super-competent female characters who for one reason or another have serious dependencies on Dreyfus, but they are also characters enough in their own right to not make that tendency too glaring. Also, space pigs. If you like a good mystery and a good space romp, give this one a try.

Interesting twist on the murder mystery theme.

Well written story wise and good movement of the plot although it went on a very long time. I didn't get a hint of the murderer til ‘the butler did it' scene, which I like.

I didn't like the structure of the paragraphs. There was absolutely no visual [and probably audio as well] transition of the storylines switching, not even a graphic separator or extra blank lines! I had to quickly reread the top of the paragraph to do the catch up and there was alot of switching going on.

I may try the next in the series, although I'm not a murder-based mystery fan.

Fun read.

It's fine. I think this might be a case where the audiobook performance got in the way of the story. John Lee has an idiosyncratic style, which apparently works for many people but not for me; a bit too monotone, with an oddly portentous intonation.

Update: after listening to other audiobooks narrated by John Lee, I think this is probably an outlier. For some reason this reading is much flatter than his other work.