So. I love Robert Jackson Bennett. His Divine Cities trilogy is probably my favorite fantasy series of all time; they are so good that I went and bougSo. I love Robert Jackson Bennett. His Divine Cities trilogy is probably my favorite fantasy series of all time; they are so good that I went and bought all of his other books as soon as I was done with those. And they are really amazing. But this novella just freaked the fuck out of me. In a good way? I read the synopsis, and I thought, “Jeez, Mr. Bennett, couldn’t you have stuck to fiction?”. He's clearly very angry at American gun culture, the media that takes fear-mongering to another level, the predatory way advertisers use social media, and the vapid devotion of the public to reality tv. This novella is how he patched those things together.
In an imaginary America, 30 or 40 years from now, marketers have found a way to monetize on mass shootings, by turning them into reality TV. This means that people who want to commit mass shootings can apply to be contestants on this show, which scouts out the optimal location to get as much viewership and interest as possible. Survivors will get money rewards, as will anyone who can actually take down the hostile shooters. But this particular episode of "Vigilance" goes awry in a horrifying way.
I’m Canadian: we have a lot of guns up here too, but we don’t do the mass shooting thing very often. It happens, sure, but not on a regular basis. My husband is American: we go see his family a few times a year, and I’d be lying if I said that I don’t feel a certain pressure lifting off of my shoulders when we cross the border back into the land of maple syrup.
I was sadly not surprised to see a few people found this novella heavy-handed and to be the work of a city slicker who doesn’t understand gun ownership. I am of the opinion that you don’t need to “understand gun ownership” (whatever that means) to grasp the idea that there are too many mass shootings taking place in the United States, and that sensationalism is what drives the media. How hard is it to imagine a marketer with zero moral barometer would simply choose to cash out on that?
A punch-to-the-gut novella by a very talented writer. It brought “The Sheep Look Up” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) to my mind, as it is as relevant and prescient as Brunner’s book. It is well-written, without frills (the topic doesn't really call for frills), and yes, it's a bit didactic, but it's an interesting portrait of what could happen...
Robert: I want to hug you and make you a cup of tea. You sound like you need a hug and a cup of tea. We all do.
Merged review:
So. I love Robert Jackson Bennett. His Divine Cities trilogy is probably my favorite fantasy series of all time; they are so good that I went and bought all of his other books as soon as I was done with those. And they are really amazing. But this novella just freaked the fuck out of me. In a good way? I read the synopsis, and I thought, “Jeez, Mr. Bennett, couldn’t you have stuck to fiction?”. He's clearly very angry at American gun culture, the media that takes fear-mongering to another level, the predatory way advertisers use social media, and the vapid devotion of the public to reality tv. This novella is how he patched those things together.
In an imaginary America, 30 or 40 years from now, marketers have found a way to monetize on mass shootings, by turning them into reality TV. This means that people who want to commit mass shootings can apply to be contestants on this show, which scouts out the optimal location to get as much viewership and interest as possible. Survivors will get money rewards, as will anyone who can actually take down the hostile shooters. But this particular episode of "Vigilance" goes awry in a horrifying way.
I’m Canadian: we have a lot of guns up here too, but we don’t do the mass shooting thing very often. It happens, sure, but not on a regular basis. My husband is American: we go see his family a few times a year, and I’d be lying if I said that I don’t feel a certain pressure lifting off of my shoulders when we cross the border back into the land of maple syrup.
I was sadly not surprised to see a few people found this novella heavy-handed and to be the work of a city slicker who doesn’t understand gun ownership. I am of the opinion that you don’t need to “understand gun ownership” (whatever that means) to grasp the idea that there are too many mass shootings taking place in the United States, and that sensationalism is what drives the media. How hard is it to imagine a marketer with zero moral barometer would simply choose to cash out on that?
A punch-to-the-gut novella by a very talented writer. It brought “The Sheep Look Up” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) to my mind, as it is as relevant and prescient as Brunner’s book. It is well-written, without frills (the topic doesn't really call for frills), and yes, it's a bit didactic, but it's an interesting portrait of what could happen...
Robert: I want to hug you and make you a cup of tea. You sound like you need a hug and a cup of tea. We all do....more
This book is a beautifully written and deeply disturbing post-apocalyptic horror novella and I don’t know if Oh my god, what the actual fuck was this?
This book is a beautifully written and deeply disturbing post-apocalyptic horror novella and I don’t know if I am going to recover. Holy shit.
In a world devastated by a climate catastrophe, a woman has found shelter with a mysterious, oppressive, and violent religious order. She writes her story in small sections, with paper and ink she finds, steals, or makes. She tries to capture memories of her life before this community, before the cruelty through which she survives. And one day, a newcomer joins the Sisterhood, and everything slowly changes.
And I really don’t want to say more. It’s just too brutal. And I say that as someone who has read a ton of dystopian sci-fi and horror. But it’s absolutely worth feeling devastated over. Read it at your own risk, but I don't think you'll regret it. As heartbreaking as it is....more
A friend encouraged me to watch the tv series “The Boys”, knowing my love for the darker type of superhero comics, like “Watchmen” and “Doom Patrol” .A friend encouraged me to watch the tv series “The Boys”, knowing my love for the darker type of superhero comics, like “Watchmen” and “Doom Patrol” . I was about two episodes in when I clocked that this just had to have been a graphic novel before it was a tv show, and a few clicks confirmed that my suspicions were correct. Of course it’s a Garth Ennis graphic novel, too! With the gore and the language, I feel like I should have expected that! I got a copy of the first volume after wrapping up the first season (I am now officially all caught up!).
In a situation like this, it’s very difficult to not automatically compare the graphic novel and the tv show, and I might be voicing an unpopular opinion here, but I have a slight preference for the show. Part of that is because I very excited by the amazing cast: so many alumni from all my favorite nerdy franchises! Jack Quaid, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg!! And that’s just in season 1! But seriously, the cast is great, the show very well shot and the first season’s arch, which establishes the world, the main characters and the ideas, was gripping and smart.
I feel like this is a very contemporary, late-stage capitalist nightmare spin on Alan Moore’s idea of ‘who’s watching the Watchmen’ and in this case of course, it’s a CIA black ops team – the titular Boys. The ‘supes’ have organized themselves in a massive corporation that more or less loans them to cities in need of superhuman crime fighters, merchandizes the shit out of them, uses them as spokespeople for various brands looking for endorsements, makes terrible movies based on stories of their various exploits… while the so-called heroes rake in the cash and indulge in, well, whatever they want, really, since they are not really accountable to anyone. The Boys are a small team that tries their best to keep them in line when they can and expose their abhorrent behavior when all else fails, but how do you control people with insane super-human powers and broken moral barometers with a huge PR team behind them?
It's almost annoying how realistic Ennis’ conceit is, in the sense that if superheroes did exist, at this stage, yep, I would expect them to incorporate and run mostly on PR, running shoe endorsements and action figures. Of course, it would all get dysfunctional and gross really fast (like making female superheroes wear extremely revealing kits for no good reason, going around assaulting anyone they don’t like because who is going to stop them and so on), and of course people who would give the supes money would expect them to take their sides and espouse their views, because that’s how sponsorship works… The premise in and of itself is a fascinating speculative rabbit hole. It’s also a clear jab at the big franchises (the Seven are basically a looking-glass world version of the Justice League) and intellectual property right owners who aggressively merchandize other people’s art for an easy cash grab (*cough* Disney *cough*)– and my understanding is that Ennis has plenty of experience dealing with the corporate overlords and their desire to control creative output. I am very much on board with the criticism of all those things, which I believe makes me his target audience.
I understand the criticism about the crudeness, the often-gross violence, the deep unlikability of the Boys, which make this series a superhero comic with… no actual heroes because everyone… kind of sucks. I think that in this regard, the tv show does a better job of bringing a certain nuance to the characters: Hughie clearly struggles with his anger and the violent impulses brought on by his grief, he abuses Starlight’s trust but obviously hates doing it, he takes pleasure in his first kill, but also feels deeply uncomfortable that he did… It’s a lot to process for a character, and that might be easier to illustrate through a good actor than through drawing. I also think that while the illustrations of Homelander are wonderfully sinister, Anthony Starr brings the character’s dead-eyed insanity to another level that isn’t quite captured on the page; it’s not easy to be menacing while you smile, but he pulls it off (not to mention the fact that he ruined milk for me for ever)!
I will probably read the rest of the series, but more out a curiosity to see how both versions differ from each other than out of enthusiasm for the books. Eric Kripke took the spirit of Ennis’ story and ran with it, and that makes the comic undeniably good. I just happen to enjoy the show more – still totally worth reading if you find the ideas intriguing....more
After giving us the ‘how we got here’ in “Shift”, Howey brings his readers back to Juliette’s timeline from “Wool”, so that we may see how her story eAfter giving us the ‘how we got here’ in “Shift”, Howey brings his readers back to Juliette’s timeline from “Wool”, so that we may see how her story ends. I was so excited to get to this book, but also kind of annoyed that it would be the end of this fantastic trilogy. Once again, big thanks to Aunt Karen for sharing my enthusiasm for sci-fi and for enabling my book hoarding!
I am going to keep this brief for the sake of keeping things as spoiler-free as humanly possible, but it must be noted that the trilogy absolutely should be read in order of publication, as this is where the story lines from books 1 and 2 finally collide, and the ultimate fate of the silo(s) is finally decided. It’s very difficult to discuss without giving anything from the previous books away, but I was amazed at how Howey manages to crank up the tension in an already incredibly tense situation. I cursed every time I had to put the book down because oh look, a curve ball I never saw coming was just thrown my way! Somehow, mysteries are still getting unravelled, so many lives hang in the balance and the existential threats keep piling up!
It's a lot.
Juliette is a fantastic character, who is thrown in a much more complicated situation than she was prepared for at the beginning of “Wool” but who stepped up to the challenges that were thrown at her in a remarkable way. I was very excited to be reunited with this reluctant hero, and I am always amazed at the way she deals with situation. She is smart, strong and terribly stubborn, but really, I can’t blame her for reacting the way she does after everything she has been through. Her determination to save her people is incredible, and while her temper often gets her into more trouble than she needs, she persists. She’s not perfect, but frankly, I wouldn’t want to get on Juliette’s bad side!
One of the strengths of these books is the pacing: the plot is structured in such a way that makes it very difficult not to go ‘just one more chapter!’ several times in a row, and the next thing you know, a hundred pages have gone by – and this remains the case with “Dust” until the very end. The vivid (if kind of terrifying) world-building is also one of the remarkable aspects of these books: the way Howey fleshed out his universe is so detailed and palpable that I am not tired of reading about it! I get the feeling that these books will still be really fun on a second read, and while the story Howey set out to tell is finished, I would happily read spin-offs set in the same world.
Yes, most of his characters are not terribly well-developed, I have no issues admitting that. It’s not his strength, and he tends to tell more than he shows when it comes to how his characters feel, but I also think that his intent had a different focus. This book (and the whole series, really) is about resilience, survival and fighting for the truth, so there isn’t much focus on the more personal emotions of the characters – yet he still wants to impress on his readers that they are motivated by love. A sheriff following his wife into a deadly wasteland, a man fighting to figure out what happened to the woman he loved (and in the tv series, a woman doing everything in her power to figure out why the man she loved died); that stuff is obviously a big deal to him, he just writes it a little too dry.
(As a sidenote, I know I am a bit emotional these days, but I can’t really deal with even tiny story lines about missing or dead pets lately. It really sets me off, and while this isn’t a big part of this book, one short chapter was hard to get through, and even if everyone, animals included, were fine by then end of it, I wasn’t. In my current mood, I think I’m going to need a book just about puppies living happy lives, hit me if you have any recommendations.)
Those books deserve all the praise that they get and are important works in the contemporary sci-fi cannon. Howey’s note at the end of this book mentions that a theme he cares a lot about is ‘not letting the cruelty of the world change who you are’, and I think that not only is that a very important and relevant theme, but I think that he did a good job of making that a core value of this series. Very highly recommended. ...more
I basically devoured “Wool” earlier this year, and then I got busy with a lot of other books, but I really couldn’t wait to get my hands on “Shift”. OI basically devoured “Wool” earlier this year, and then I got busy with a lot of other books, but I really couldn’t wait to get my hands on “Shift”. One of the biggest unanswered questions of the first book is: how did this strange underground society come to be? Who built the silo? What cataclysm forced humanity to hide underground to survive all these years?
“Shift” is more of a prequel than a sequel, because it turns the clocks back so that we, the readers, may see how things got from life as we currently know it to the strange, claustrophobic world we have come to know in “Wool”, but it doesn’t disconnect us from the people we met in the silo completely. Of course, trying to write about this without spoiling this book or the first tome of the series is basically impossible, so I will keep things simple, because those books are probably best read for the first time with as little information as possible: discovering the world is a big part of the fun with this series, and if you are as curious as I am after the first one, you will want to gobble this one up very quickly. And yes, they should definitely be read in order of publication.
One timeline is set in a fictional mid 2000s in the United-States, and follows a young congressman named Donald (no, not that Donald), who is shocked to learnt that his old architectural designs are being used for a secret government project based in Georgia. The most surprising aspect is that the powers that be want to take his design of a towering cylindrical building and put it… underground… As he begins to work on the project, believing it to be about making nuclear shelters that will never be used, he begins to notice some odd changes being made to his designs by people way above his pay grade. Another timeline forwards to the 2100s, where a man named Troy is being awakened from a cryogenic sleep and treated with a memory-altering drug, as he prepares for a 6-month ‘shift’ working in a strange place from which he can see a ravaged landscape readers of the previous book will feel familiar with…
Yeah, that’s about as much as I can tell you without spoiling stuff, but if you liked the first book, you will enjoy exploring the world further. Howey has crafted a very immersive environment, and I found myself completely sucked in very quickly. Donald and Troy are not as interesting as Juliette is, but as protagonists go, watching them trying to figure out what mess they got themselves into and discovering what’s going on along with them is very interesting. There are a few tropes (scheming double-crossing politicians, oh my!), but they are used intelligently to send the reader on a near-future sci-fi trip that isn’t that hard to imagine. Unfortunately.
I love (in a ‘purely as a theoretical concept’ kind of way) the idea of a pill that erases traumatic memories because most people are so desperate to put bad things behind and act like they have never happened. Pardon the segway, but recent reports show upticks in covid cases pretty much everywhere and when I mention this to people, a lot of them act as if the pandemic had never even happened or was a thing from such a distant past that worrying about it now makes no sense to them – which flabbergasts me. This might be a natural response from people who simply desire to move forward and leave the past and their suffering behind, but Howey uses this as a clear metaphor for the age-old aphorism, that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it… Add to that the fact that no one gobbling down those pills is dealing with their collective trauma adequately, something which has a way of biting people in the ass… and you get this claustrophobic and bizarre society we discovered in “Wool”. My point is, this is a brilliant idea and is a sure-fire recipe for disaster, especially when it becomes a thing at the same time as when humanity finds a way to blow itself back into the stone age, and I loved the way it was used in the story of the silo.
I was reminded a bit of “A Canticle for Leibowitz”, which was a fascinating speculation on a post-nuclear disaster Earth when the destruction has been so complete that even the knowledge of how to recreate the cataclysm was lost, and people could only vaguely speculate on what life had been like before based on whatever random artefact they could get their hands on. The “Silo” series obviously doesn’t have the religious element “Canticle” did, but there are still interesting parallels to be drawn between the two books.
Not unlike “Wool”, this is the kind of book that quickly becomes very difficult to put down, as the short chapters and rapid pacing become very addictive very quickly, and the 600 or so pages went by in a flash. In fact, I think I found this book even more tense and hard to put away than the first. I had a few days of growling at anyone who tried to pull me away from the book for silly things like eating and working – feh! Howey definitely has a knack for writing things in a very cinematic way, and hopefully, the wonderful Apple+ tv show keeps going long enough that we can have the pleasure of seeing this part of the silo’s story on the screen, because it is perfect material for adaptation.
One of the underlying themes of the series so far is corruption, and the consequences of hoarding knowledge and restricting access to information and technology – even when it’s allegedly for the greater good. I had noted in the first book that I kept thinking about Soviet Russia as I read about the way labor is organized, compartmentalized, and staggered; I also thought about the USSR reading this one, but more about the realpolitik and truth manipulation aspect of the Soviet Union. I have a pet theory that the USA is way more like the USSR (albeit in sneaky ways, though shit like Project 2025 is making it seem less and less sneaky) that they will ever admit – much more so now than when Howey wrote those books, but he may simply be very smart and prescient. There was also an echo of my readings about the Chernobyl disaster because of a team of workers who have to proceed with extremely dangerous work that they don’t want to do but must, because someone has to.
While Howey is better at plotting than he is at character development, he also brings a very practical human element to the genre of post-apocalyptic sci-fi, and I really appreciate that line of speculation and find it much more interesting than “Hunger Games”-type of dystopian pageantry. That might be because I am more the type to worry about what I would do should the shit hit the fan in my lifetime (I was recently reminded that I once put together a go-bag when I was 9 years old, so obviously, I have issues to deal with there) than the type to imagine what things would be like a hundred years after that (I won’t be there!).
If you enjoyed the first book of this series, or are simply curious as to how it all came to be, this is a great, if stressful and claustrophobic ride. Very recommended!...more
One of the blurbs on the cover of this book described it as a ‘Black Mirror’ episode, and honestly, yeah, pretty spot on. Near future techno-dystopia,One of the blurbs on the cover of this book described it as a ‘Black Mirror’ episode, and honestly, yeah, pretty spot on. Near future techno-dystopia, with just enough elements from daily life as we know it to make it feel uncomfortably realistic. Urgh.
My online presence is insignificant. Goodreads, Instagram (so by association, FB) but that’s basically it. I’m just not really interested in more, frankly, and I realize that probably ages me, and that’s fine. So reading a book about people who have taken the idea of influencer to the extreme but logical end of that concept – so people who live almost their entire life fully online, supported by a professional production team… well, that feels both like a thing that will happen any minute now, but it also freaks me out a bit.
Joey is a producer for one such influencer, Indi, basically running his livestream, making sure that he does what’s required to keep his fanbase engaged. This goes from the simple stuff, like product placement and event attendance, to supervising auditions for Indi’s new girlfriend (because her likability might impact his, duh). Rudra is Indi’s cousin, who was mostly estranged from his family, but is brought back into the fold when his uncle dies and begs Indi for a job on his team. The complex family dynamics in place are already making things fraught, but things get significantly more complicated when a conflict with investors come up, and information from both Joey and Indi’s past is dug up and used to threaten them.
This book is short, and fast-paced, and has a lot to say about our addiction to vapid social media and surveillance capitalism. In North America, we worry about it, but in countries like India, the consequences of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person could be much more severe than the run-of-the-mill cancellations we see here on an almost daily basis. Samit Basu is a brilliant writer, who managed to get me engaged with his characters immediately and gave me such a rich sense of the settings that I could imagine all the noises and colors and lights and smells of Delhi. But to say that enjoyed a story that focuses on paranoia would not be quite accurate. It’s an incredibly effective story, detailed and precise, and it was a great read, but it draws a bleak and concerning picture of the future. I will be looking for more books by Basu, and keeping an eye out for future publication because this is a talent not to be missed if you are interested in sci-fi. Very recommended. ...more
I really had difficulties with reading over the past six months, maybe even longer than that. Anxiety is to blame"We weren't meant to live like this."
I really had difficulties with reading over the past six months, maybe even longer than that. Anxiety is to blame for stuttering attention span and perpetual exhaustion, but I'm finally turning a corner and reading in big fat gulps, like a parched person suddenly given an oasis with which to quench their thirst. It feels nice.
"Wool" was a perfect book to read while getting back into my gluttonous rhythm: short chapters and quick pacing meant I took the book with me everywhere and cracked it open at every opportunity, eager to find out what happens next in a way I hadn't felt in a long time. I have a lot of gratitude for Hugh Howey, if only for that. I did something else I haven't done in a while, which is avoid spoilers at all cost: I wanted to keep the excited curiosity going as long as possible!
My copy of this book has a blurb that compare it to "1984" and "Brave New World", and that felt like a huge boast to me: these are the freaking gold standards of dystopic sci-fi, and how any work could live up to that praise is something I struggled to imagine. But I soon found out that the world of "Wool" is one of suffocating claustrophobia, extreme surveillance of it's citizens and the way they behave, high secrecy and information withholding, control over reproduction... The world Howey dreamt up is deeply unsettling and, perhaps because of the classics of this genre that came before, also feels uncomfortably familiar. And yes, just like "1984" and "Brave New World", this is set in a unspecified but near enough future featuring technology that is not beyond what we can conceive right now.
Following unknown but catastrophic events, what is left of human civilization has come to reside in an enormous underground silo, encompassing over a hundred "floors". The world outside the silo is strictly taboo, as the view from external sensors make clear that the air outside is terribly toxic and would kill a person who would step outside in just a few moments. Most people are content with their lives in this strange structure, but some people ask themselves questions about what life in the silo was like, before a rebellion that took place about 140 years before the beginning of the narrative, when many servers were destroyed and all information about the past was lost.
One such person was the sheriff's own wife. She found something that made her utter words that are an automatic death sentence in the silo: "I want to go out". She is given a sort of hazmat suit and supplies with which to clean the sensors and she is sent outside, to clean so that citizens of the silo can see the outside devastation more clearly, and to die in the poisoned atmosphere they are hiding from. But something about her death makes no sense to her now-widowed husband - and not simply because of his grief. He soon follows in her footsteps outside the silo, leaving an ominous mystery for his successor to solve.
Said successor is an unlikely pick: Juliette was an engineer, working on the deepest levels of the silo, who had dedicated her life to keeping the main generator working. She had no experience or interest in law-enforcement but she ends up with the big job, where the suspicions of her detractors are confirmed: she asks too many questions and she is too smart. To say more would be spoiling the fun, so I will leave the summary at that, but trust me, things that happen from that point on are twisted, upsetting and fascinating.
The pacing was a pleasant surprise: I could barely put the damn book down, the action was rolling at a fast and gripping clip, and next thing I knew, I had gobbled down the entire book. And while some characters flirted a bit with stereotypes, I found them well-drawn up and easy to get attached to. Juliette has a lot of Ripley energy: smart, no nonsense, stubborn and highly qualified. She is the perfect character through which a reader can explore this strange world, and I loved her so much and rooted for her every step of the way. And what a way that was! Whew! I finished the book and took a long bath with a big glass of wine just to calm myself down.
I highly recommend this novel for all fans to dystopian sci-fi and readers who enjoy a good action-packed mystery. I am very excited to read the next tome in the trilogy!
I picked up this book after spying the trilogy in my aunt Karen's shelves and her enthusiastic endorsement of both the books and the series (which I just started watching last night, and it's freaking awesome already!). She is a wise person and she has excellent taste! Thank you Karen!...more
“OK, David, I see what you are trying to tell me about entertainment addiction, optimization culture and the corporatization of government. You are ve“OK, David, I see what you are trying to tell me about entertainment addiction, optimization culture and the corporatization of government. You are very prescient, and I actually agree with you. But I also kind of want you to fuck all the way off because you felt the need to be this obtuse about those topics. You felt the need to make me jump through your hoops to hammer in your points, and now I feel just as beaten up and sore as Hal does after a long day of practice, and yes, I will go hide in a corner and smoke a big joint now, because my brain feels like you ran it through a fryer and I need to relax. And by the way, when you wrote ‘Technically gorgeous.... But oddly hollow, empty, no sense of dramatic towardness—no narrative movement toward a real story.... like a very smart person conversing with himself’, did you mean your own book? Because you stole the words right out of my mouth, buddy.
Look, I get it. You are way too smart for the average reader, and I understand why you want to make them work for it, but ‘hard to get’ never worked for me, I am way too literal-minded to play those games. I have been reading up on you and I am pretty sure you’re on the spectrum – that’s obvious from some of your stream-of-consciousness passages, I recognize it because that’s how my brain works too! I have no objections to making the neurotypicals run in circles, but how can you be so brilliant and so boring at the same time? In this case, I really mean it when I say: ‘It’s not you, it’s me’. It really is. It’s me that doesn’t want to spend my precious few hours of dedicated reading time forcing myself to get to the next brilliant part of your book by enduring the parts that make me incredibly frustrated. I just don’t have that kind of patience or time anymore, and I really am sorry. I just feel like I need to focus on other things… I think there was a lot of potential there, but let’s face it, we’re simply not compatible. I’m sure other readers who love you will more than make up for my leaving you behind. I am obviously an outlier here, so don’t let it hurt your feelings; I’m sure you’ll make someone else very happy with your book.”...more
I had never read anything by Adrian Tchaikovsky, despite seeing his name very often on Goodreads and various lists of sci-fi anMore like 4 and a half.
I had never read anything by Adrian Tchaikovsky, despite seeing his name very often on Goodreads and various lists of sci-fi and fantasy authors to watch. I’m not sure why, but when I saw “The City of Last Chances”, I grabbed it. Sure, the cover art is gorgeous, but this is a “science fantasy” (to me, that means a novel where the magical system is basically a replacement for technology, as opposed to high fantasy, where the magic is a central element) novel set in a city-state occupied by a foreign power, where a resistance is brewing, cultural and class conflict fans the flame of rebellion and weird creatures and artifact exist in the city’s periphery, just to make things weird and scary. Honestly, that all sounded too cool to pass up!
After a game of chance set in an inn bordering the ominous woods surrounding the city of Ilmar, an extremely precious artefact is lost/stolen, a high-ranking member of the occupying system of the Palleseen dies horribly – and everyone around that gambling table will feel the ramifications of those events in their lives, because this object and the death linked to it are much more significant than any of them would have guessed.
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.
I really appreciate that Tchaikovsky uses this setting as a commentary on class war, civil oppression and racism – without really ever getting didactic about it. His sense of pacing keeps the story going without getting bogged down by too much expositions, which is both great, because it kept me reading frantically, but it also makes it easy to get confused with the strange world at first: all the new names and concepts can feel a bit overwhelming until one finds their stride. But it’s absolutely worth the effort and the patience: Tchaikovsky may not give you a guide book to Ilmar, but it becomes clear that he knows every nook and cranny of the city very quickly. I also really appreciate that this is a stand-alone: I love a good series as much as the next gal, but I have been burnt by those before, especially by authors I wasn’t familiar with, and I loved being able to dip my toes in without having to commit to reading 10 books to find out what’s going on.
Gabrielle (Reading Rampage)
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