City of Last Chances (The Tyrant Philosophers)

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Tchaikovsky (Children of Ruin) examines alternate dimensions and speculative evolution in this tropey, entertaining sci-fi adventure that’s both outrageously bizarre and utterly convincing. Continue reading » The city and it’s people are walking the line between total assimilation into the “Palleseen Sway” and all-out riots-in-the-streets revolution. The structure does a great job of introducing you to a character before you read a chapter from their perspective - this gives you a foundation to work off based on the opinion and biases of the character interaction you met them through. It’s really quite delicately done and it was a pleasure to see who’s perspective we were going to get next, as well as what we would learn from them about current events or the world outside of Ilmar.

As an aside, readers who enjoyed Head of Zeus’ brilliant The Hood by Lavie Tidhar in 2021 will feel very much at home in Ilmar. Certainly, Tchaikovsky’s latest fantasy tale scratched a mystical dark wood itch I didn’t realise I’d been needing scratching. The Herons, river smugglers who bring weapons into the city from the surrounding country, and who get refugees out.The Palleseen Sway - their term for the grand outreach effort that had conquered Allor and Telmark and other lands besides - was always expressed as a great service to the world. A world bitterly at odds with itself, beset by superstition and ignorance, divided in countless ways: language, currency, laws, understanding. The Temporary Commission of Ends and Means, having brought perfection to their own islands, understood that their achievements could not stand so long as a tide of foreign chaos lapped against their shores. They had a duty. A crusade. They could perfect the world and improve the lives of all. Tchaikovsky explores themes of oppression and revolution through characters at various levels of social hierarchy on multiple sides of the conflict. The impulsive passion and heart of youth in their idealized yet privileged shouts for freedom they have only a vague notion of, the cynical resignation of older figures who only talk of uprising but make do with unfair compromise, self-styled rebels who try to profit from the fighting. Caught up in all this are the people at the bottom of the pyramid who suffer either way, factory workers and demon slaves. There is even a perspective from a lowly demon from the Underworld, among my favourite chapters. Big Damn Heroes: Led by Shantrov, the insanity-inducing, hallucinatory forces of the Reproach are what save the refugees from the Gownhall from being arrested by the Palleseen forces set to guard the Anchorwood and Anchorage. I’m not sure what else to say. It’s an interesting book, unlike most fantasy being published these days. It's ambitious and intelligent. On the other hand, it’s also dense and difficult to get into, and I’m not sure if the effort to get through it is fully justified (deeply subjective). The hemp,” [he] growled. “The roughest hog-bristle hemp you have. But I will have the shave. Let my corpse show the rope burn.”

This is an epic drimdark fantasy from Adrian Tchaikovsky, currently a standalone. I read it as a part of the monthly reading for March 2023 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group. The book is already on the longlist of BSFA and possibly will be nominated for other awards in 2023. Fantasy Gun Control: Played straight despite Ilmar being in a fantasy version of the Industrial Revolution. Instead of guns, the most common ranged weapon are Palleseen batons-voice-activated wooden rods that use pure magic as fuel, and shoot out streams of burning hot magical force. I loved the world-building of this city, but I expected that: I read a review that compared it to New Crobuzon in the China Mieville novels and that obviously got my attention, as that fictional city haunts my dreams. The concept of the Reproach is fantastic! I also loved the multiple characters and their perspective on the events and their unfolding. Event never happen to just one person, and this multiple POV approach made the story rich and nuanced. From the idealist student, priest going through a crisis, mercenaries and factory works, you get a rich picture of a city on the brink of civil unrest.

Oppression. Political intrigue. Colonization. Religion. Poverty. Bigotry. Magic. Demons. Worker's rights. Crime. Revolution. Wrongful incarceration. These are all a part of this story by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Mind Virus: The Reproach's curse is a fantasy version of this. Someone afflicted by the curse begins to believe themselves to be a member of the old Varatsin ducal court, hallucinates the Reproach as it was during Ilmar's medieval period, and tries to draw the uninfected into the curse by calling them ancient titles. When the second-most important Palleseen official in the city is killed while acting as an ambassador to the Wood, his protective charms stolen, the consequences ripple to every part of Ilmar, sparking a series of events that could lead to the city’s liberation, or to its destruction.

Approximately every 8-10 chapters, there is a Mosaic chapter, which I would describe as a city-eyed view of happenings: summarising what is taking place throughout many areas of the city at the given time. As City of Last Chances progresses, we’re updated rega These two areas had me fascinated the entire time, and complemented the rest of the city and the story taking place within it so so well.Tchaikovsky (Children of Time) launches his Final Architecture series with a dazzlingly suspenseful space opera. A colossal, sentient entity known as an Architect rips Earth apart into a Continue reading » The Reproach is a part of the city that used to house the rich and the wealthy, but has since succumbed to a curse of some kind. Now anyone that enters it unprepared, stays there for too long or gets caught by those that occupy it permanently, will be taken in by this curse and will be unable, or sometimes unwilling to leave. The Vultures, criminal factions who use patriotism as an excuse for raiding businesses that support the Palleseen. But the old ways and beliefs have a habit of perpetuating and there’s an ancient power to those customs that the Pallssen covet, as they do all power. Treasure hunters and ruin divers often take high-risk, high-reward jobs to loot or steal from the abandoned houses in the Reproach’s outer most regions.

This is a demanding novel, one that rewarded me with some of the most beautiful scenes I've read, but in the end left me exhausted, though still pretty satisfied. Body Surf: The reason why no-one ever kills an Indweller. The other Indwellers will demand compensation through someone else, preferably the slain Indweller's killer, wearing the dead Indweller's mask, which causes the Indweller's spirit to possess the new body. Hoist by Her Own Petard: The Bitter Sisters are both killed by the giant centipede they used to feed their prisoners to. Evil Smells Bad: The first sign of Sage-Invigilator Culvern's presence in a scene is likely to be a character describing the awful smell that comes before him.

The Man They Couldn't Hang: By the end of the book, Ruslav, Lemya, Yasnic, Ivarn, and several other characters count as this. Ivarn even counts twice-over.