City of Last Chances

I can respect the ambition on this story and on the surface it ticks all the boxes that I like in a book. Fantasy with a dash of grimdark? Check. Machiavellian scheming? Check. Fascinating world building? Check.

The titular city is a boiling mess of revolution, criminality and idealism. Located on a portal to another world the whole place is a cauldron of different tensions and motivations. Recently conquered by the Palleseen, an intensely bureaucratic civilization that aims to ‘perfect' the world, the underlying tensions of the occupation provide the main setting. The Pals want order, but they are somewhat corrupt and lazy, following a brutal approach to dissent. The students are idealists who want to throw off the yoke of oppresion. The workers are chafing under increased work and the brutality of the occupation. The criminals and the old high society each want to try and take control of any revolution to make sure they end up on top at the end. The setting is delightful!

There are a lot of characters and this is where it began to fall down a little for me. Some of the characters I really loved (the priest with his god is brilliant!) but the shear size of the cast means that they don't really get time to develop and quite a few of them I just failed to engage with.

This is an epic novel, dense in its construction and I can really appreciate the self contained nature of it. There is a lot to love here.

I really wanted to like this book, but there was just too many characters to keep track of. The story was a bit overdone. I should have known with the glossary at the beginning of the book. This one just didn't hold my attention.

Probably 3.5. Took me a while to get into the story.

Overview: A weird fantasy in the style of [a:China Miéville 33918 China Miéville https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1243988363p2/33918.jpg]'s [b:Perdido Street Station 68494 Perdido Street Station (New Crobuzon, #1) China Miéville https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1680461055l/68494.SY75.jpg 3221410], told very skillfully in chapters from different points of view, resulting in a very satisfying experience.More detailed thoughts to be added shortly - this book really left my head spinning in a really good way.

Mixes of Miéville, of Gaiman (and probably Pratchett although i yet to read him) a dash of Abercrombie. This Tchaikovsky is very different from the SF one. More playful but just as complex. Satisfying.

I haven't read something like this before, I really liked it!

I was really enjoying this book for the first half, but unfortunately the last half (specifically the last quarter) fell flat for me. I keep giving Adrian Tchaikovsky's books a chance because the plots are really interesting to me, but everytime I read one of his books, I think his writing just isn't for me. In this book, I really liked most of the characters but I felt as though they were just One Thing and not very complex. Despite that, I enjoyed exploring this world were everything is “perfect” and if there were more books set in this world, I would absolutely check them out. I'm not giving up on Adrian! Maybe the next book of his I read will be The One!






Thank you to Head of Zeus and NetGalley for providing me with an eBook copy to review.

“They hung you. They hung all of you.”

“They did a crap job of it,”

4.5

Dnf page 290

Well I popped my Tchaikovsky cherry and it was not good. I've never wanted to like a book more than this one. The cover is my favorite cover of all time. I truly wanted this to be on my bookshelf and I've heard such great things about the author that I had to give this a try. Granted I've heard that his fantasy is not that great compared to his Sci-fi which is why I wanted to read this first before reading a sci-fi masterpiece.

Let me tell you I almost never give a rating on a DNF under 75%. I don't think it's fair to the author when it could just be a slow burn, but 60% is close enough when you take in to account just how much effort I had to give. Hell the first chapter was alarming for me. It reads as if Charles Dicken's wrote 1984 but included subtle magic with God and Demons. That might sound good to you but I don't like classics unless it's Dumas and while I enjoyed the premise of 1984, it was still a hard book to get into. Then you include religious creatures but in no way could you imagine how he portrays them in this.

All in all you might like the book if you can make it to the end but I tap out, but by no means am I giving up on the author as a whole.

 thank you netgalley for the digital arc! 

this book took me quite a while to finish and i sat with my thoughts about it for a while after as well. while i felt the writing was good, i thought it did feel a bit convoluted at times & therefore i had some trouble following the story. maybe it's a result of me not being used to this type of book & could probably be a matter of personal taste. 

i did however find the world building quite interesting and that made me keep reading. the fact that we jumped from perspective to perspective a lot managed to take me out of the story sometimes, but some of the perspectives were page turners as well, so i'm a bit befuddled. 

personally this book probably wasn't for me, but i'm certain it's the perfect book for a lot of people out there! 

so weird and yet so vivid