Chasm City
Ratings57
Average rating4
There is something very strange about reading this book a second time after having forgotten almost everything that happened in it, and having it slowly come back to you, at the same time it comes back to the protagonist.
A Space Opera, Cyberpunk noir, First Contact Technothriller.
Alastair Reynolds is simply the most imaginative author I've ever read.
This book is a bit of a whirlwind with main characters that shift and weave through the book, while always remaining interesting. The SF concepts are extremely interesting and one of the major themes of the book is immortality. Specifically, how long would you have to live and how much good would you have to do to overcome some amount of evil you did early in your life.
The author does a great job of changing your perception on the characters in the second half of the book, which may be jarring for some. I can't say much more about that without major spoilers. But it is done well and actually in a plausible way, given the constraints of his universe. Speaking of which, his universe is very broad and well thought-out. There are aliens who are very nearly incomprehensible, but still quite interesting. Relativistic space travel is also considered throughout the book with generation ships featuring throughout.
In the end, I highly recommend this book. I wish I had read it before Revelation space and will need to go back and re-read that one now to see if it is more digestible on the 2nd time around.
Alastair paints a huge landscape. That is evident from the fact that at about 20% into the book do you get to the actual story. The rest of it upto that point is just making you aware of the vastness of his creation. While this is right up few peoples alley, it certainly ticks me off. Chasm city is slow and full of information that is not relevant to the story and if you try and read it standalone (like I did) it just drags and drags till you either give it up completely or take a break. So I would say, read the first book and then try this one only if you like this sort of thing.
3.5/5 stars
Took a long time to get interesting, like 2/3 of the book. Not that the first two thirds were boring, far from it, it just felt as if it was going nowhere, Tanner was just stumbling from one situation too. the next.
Could/Should have been shorter.
Really awesome book, way better than some of the previous books (Revelation Gap, Redemption Ark) out of this Universe (Revelation Space)
Great world building, amazing imaginary tech. A nice surprising twist towards the last third.
Not that much of a story, and definitely not original: a very standard (and quite lame) noir.
The last third is good, but the first 2 (over 450 pages!) are incredibly slow-paced and boring. I struggled tremendously to get through them: maybe a much shortened version would have been a better book.
The characters are very under-developed and do not behave in a credible way: the main one is repeatedly helped out without any reasonable reason. Also, none is really likable or dislikable, nor memorable.
Almost every sub-chapter ends in a Hollywood (or yellow-press) style punchline: very annoying for my self-esteem as a reader, to be treated like a summer blockbuster loving goof.
Definitely no Blade Runner here (as claimed by Publisher Weekly).
It was just good enough to keep reading, but bad enough to struggle for that, so I would not recommend it to my friends.
Once more, I ended up with the conclusion that I am definitely not an Alistair Reynolds fan.