Elysium Fire (The Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies, 2)
<br><div><b><i>Elysium Fire</i> 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. </b><br><br>Ten thousand city-state habitats orbit the planet Yellowstone, forming a near-perfect democratic human paradise. <br><br>But even utopia needs a police force. For the citizens of the Glitter Band that organization is Panoply, and the prefects are its operatives.<br><br>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...<br><br>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.<br><br>For more from Alastair Reynolds, check out:<br><br><i>Revenger</i><br></div>