Critically-acclaimed author Alastair Reynolds creates a fascinating hybrid of space opera, police procedural and character study (Publishers Weekly) in this novel in his Revelation Space universe. Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a law enforcement officer with the Panoply. His beat is the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, the teeming hub of a human interstellar empire spanning many worlds.

His current case: investigating a murderous attack against one of the habitats that leaves nine hundred people dead. But his investigation uncovers something far more serious than mass slaughter–a covert plot by an enigmatic entity who seeks nothing less than total control of the Glitter Band.