City of Last Chances is a superbly written, complex, intricately woven standalone fantasy from an award-winning author. From the beginning, the story comes across as sophisticated and quite dense. The first part of the story unfolds at a slower pace as multi-viewpoint characters and world is established. When you add a slower pace to the story coupled with the dense prose style, I struggled to find a way into the book. However, with much perseverance, the last half of the story's plotlines converge, and all the intrigue pays off as everything becomes clear.

This book is different, ambitious, and intelligent, and Tchaikovsky should be commended for this. It is a book you need to take your time with as you absorb events at a slower pace, but it does reward you in the end.

Thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus for this e-arc.

This book reads more like a series of interconnected short stories than a fantasy novel. While I didn't have an issue with this format, I found it very hard to get into because I felt so disconnected from the plot. Even when I finally became invested in the plot and the mystery of Anchorwood, there were just so many characters I was lost. The prose was beautiful, as expected of Tchaikovsky, but this was a very difficult and demanding read.

I got City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky from NetGalley for a fair and honest review.

City of Last Chance is a hard Fantasy novel about the city of Ilmar, which has been occupied by an other county which is also trying to change its culture and how the local population in all sectors are dealing with this.

With City of Last Chances being a hard fantasy which leaps into the story right from the start, which means as normal there is a steep learning curve at the start of the book, however eventually the story started to make more sense.

I am not sure however if the novel ever became clear enough for all the little bits of the story, to become clear however I did feel that the main part of the story really did draw me in and kept me reading till the end.

Having said that I do feel that for me fantasy novels are at their best when they are able to tell you more about the present than what is happening in the story.

While there were times when the novel did examine this subject, it was only really done in a few fleeting moments and while the novel could start a discussion on how the people at the top always want to stay at the top no matter what.

Or how language has such a control over how we think, because without the word for an object we can not think about it.

While for me as a reader I felt that City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky was not one of my most enjoyable read, for some one who is in to hard fantasy based more on the political side of the genre then this will be ideal read for them.

For some reason it often takes me much longer to love Adrian Tchaikovsky’s fantasy offerings even though I tend to have love-at-first-sight affairs with his science fiction.

It took me a little while to wrap my head and heart around the happenings in this one. It’s odd and weird and a bit warped, and full of strange and often unlikable characters inhabiting a strange and decidedly unpleasant city that is teetering on the verge of major unrest, waiting for a tiny spark - a McGuffin, really - to set off a chain of disasters. There’s magic - it’s fantasy after all - but really it’s more of a veneer for the social divisions and bureaucratic oppression musings, and the city and tone at times reminded me of China Miéville minus the overuse of thesaurus. The city of Ilmar may be not as strange and beautifully ugly as Miéville’s New Crobuzon, but it’s decidedly unpleasant in a oddly fascinating way.

“We can’t bring perfection to the world without the threat of force. We can’t rely on the threat of force unless they know we will follow up on it.”

It’s not a place to see through any kind of rosy shades. It touches on colonialism and oppression, exploitation and subjugation, naive youthful fervor and cynical calculated greed. It won’t give you the well-deserved feel-good moments of triumph of the good and comeuppance for the bad, or the bright future following some glorious Revolution. Tchaikovsky seems more of a realist than an optimist here, although there is a bit of dark humor at times.

But don’t expect your usual heroes and heroics. Those don’t pay off. It’s a place for those who work for self-interest, and all we can hope is that at some point it may align with what may be the lesser of evils. And don’t expect hand-holding and exposition - you are in the middle of it all, and Tchaikovsky expects you to figure it all out, and with a bit of an effort you certainly can, and enjoy it, too.

The greyish characters often shown in intentionally unflattering light, the ever-shifting POVs, the web of narrative threads and the lack of feel-good vibes in a weird oppressive city do make this book a tough cookie to enjoy at first, but the further and further I got in this story the more I found myself taken in by the narrative and that seeming ease with which Tchaikovsky weaves all these narrative strands together. This one to me is one of his better fantasy works, and I hope he keeps churning out books at his remarkable pace for many more years.

4 stars.

——————

Thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Tchaikovsky returns to fantasy, a field in which I've read precisely none of his 15+ previous books, because at first glance they looked like generic epic, and though I've since come to realise he's much more than that, he's never let up in his release of multiple SF books per year long enough for me to do much digging into his backlist. The opening list of chapter titles (itself mildly unusual in fiction, no?) starts with 'Yasnic's Relationship with God", followed by "The Final Moments of Sage-Archivist Ochelby", and something about the mordant, whimsical ring of them made me think of Clark Ashton Smith, or Jeff Vandermeer's early days in Ambergris, which isn't altogether wrong, but for all its strangeness, the occupied city of Ilmar feels a little more gritty than their fantasy metropolises; as those titles suggest, not all of the POV characters make it to a second appearance, and even for those who recur, their strand of the plot can be cut short at any time. For which the obvious reference point nowadays would be GRRM, though for a while I was thinking more of Joe Abercrombie, even if that might just be because he's the low fantasy author I read most often. Gradually, though, I realised that's way off; Abercrombie's characters tend to have internal monologues about how wretched they are, only to do something almost heroic at the last, whereas here the characters are much more likely to make endless excuses for their own hypocrisies, telling themselves how virtuous they are even as they screw everyone else over to save their own skins or sate base urges. To some extent this is a consequence of life under occupation, locals and invaders alike constantly having to make messy compromises even as they reassure themselves of their own commitment to the cause, but Tchaikovsky knows better than to make out this is exclusive to people living under a foreign yoke; we all do it, failing to act, preserving our own liberties against the unspecified future day when we'll make decisive use of them, honest – "a better tomorrow bought with a succession of compromised todays".

That notion of compromise comes into even sharper focus through the ideology of the occupiers, the Palleseen – or, colloquially and ironically, the Pals. Ingeniously, Tchaikovsky has cut out the middleman and gone for the unified field theory behind any modern dictatorship which professes to believe in something beyond its own enrichment, from the Terror onwards: perfectibility. The quiet bit said out loud, right down to the occupation being run by a Perfecture which is not, as I first thought, a typo. Beneath that, various Orwellian Schools ensuring 'Correct' Speech, Exchange, Conduct and so forth – the use of 'rational' measurements, of their new, artificial language in which everything not dull or hectoring sounds wrong. Even the quiet refusal to accept human weakness in the tightness of their uniforms is spot-on. But of course, because this is a fantasy setting, their lack of toleration for 'superstition' is double-edged. On the one hand, magical and cultural artefacts can be melted down into power which can be redeployed – a reification of colonialism which Yoon Ha Lee also used in his Phoenix Extravagant, though of course it's also how gentrification works, clubs and such generating cultural mana which is then siphoned off once they become luxury apartments instead. On the other hand, this is a setting where some magic is too useful to wipe out, whether that be healing spells, or the way in which businesses at the sharp end of urbanisation, from factories to brothels, rely heavily on a workforce of summoned and bound demons – one more underclass which even the most sympathetic lead, a proud union man, can't bring himself to sympathise with.

Oh, and the whole ghastly edifice of the Palleseen Sway is run by the Temporary Commission of Ends and Means, just as it has been for centuries. Funny how the party machinery never quite seems to crumble away, isn't it?

Not that the occupied are much better; the last Duke was a monster too, and most everyone here who's not a complete psycho remains more concerned with protecting their own position (or at best that of their class) than the liberation to which they pay lip service. There's plenty on the overlap between resistance and crime, protection money dressed up as patriotism, and even those not directly implicated generally give us plenty of reason to dislike them, as in the opening chapter's Yasnic, last priest of a small, whiny and very strict deity. Nor do the more openly fantastical elements provide any more tempting prospect; the Divinate are something like the setting's answer to elves, but retooled to emphasise their monstrousness, with any living outside their own land exiles because they were the most expendably flawed of the population, beyond the mathematically perfect number allowed in their clockwork paradise. Nor is there any golden age in the past, not even back before the deposed Duke; the specifics of the curse on the ruined, damned district known as the Reproach, where power once resided, are ingeniously horrible; they also feel weirdly familiar without playing as clunky allegory*.

There are respects in which fantasy, more than SF, points up the downside of Tchaikovsky's MO – whichever (sub)genre he works in, he always finds new and interesting things to do, but he does still tend to work within established boundaries, grab and reconfigure existing elements in interesting ways, rather than reinventing the whole field. Which feels more awkward when it points up things like the tendency of modern fantasy to be scrupulous about offering equal opportunities regardless of gender, even as it's fine with retaining (albeit while interrogating) class hierarchies. Still, the machinery of Ilmar is brilliantly constructed – partly it's that Spartacus dynamic of someone powerful's bad day resulting in utter devastation of the lives of the powerless, but here even the little people can take actions which pinball off half a dozen other unwitting players and shake the city. There's a single Macguffin which sets the mechanism going, but after that, things snowball spectacularly, and it would be unfair to give away quite how things get out of hand, or where they end up, but given the title, it's not letting too much slip to say that I thought this exchange provided a handy summary:
"It'll be fine tomorrow. It'll all look better."
"It won't."
"It will if you don't go to see."

*SPOILER the forms of the old court copy themselves from one unfortunate host to the next, growing ever more divorced from any underlying substance, eventually becoming just a backdrop for self-sustaining savagery – much like modern political shibboleths.

(Netgalley ARC)

City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Earc: NetGalley
Publisher:Head of Zeus, Head of Zeus -- an AdAstra Book
Publication Date: 08 Dec 2022
Genre: Sci Fiction and Fantasy

City of Last Chances got me from the start with the blur.
These are just a few top-notch characters this book has to offer.It was so much fun to watch their perspectives intersect and intertwine, and the whole city felt like it came to life.

The city has two very unique regions that help highlight the historical themes of colonization and cultural decline: Anchorwood and reproach.
The Anchor Forest is a grove in the heart of Ilmer, older than the city itself. It's a timely, magical gateway to the Wonderful World on the Other Side that Native Guides can reach. Blame is part of a town that was used to house the wealthy and affluent, but then succumbed to the curse. Anyone who is currently unprepared, who has stayed there too long, or who is held captive by those who are there permanently may be caught up in this curse and possibly unwilling to leave. I have.
Treasure hunters and ruin divers often take on high-risk, high-return jobs to loot and steal abandoned homes at the edge of Reproash.
These two areas have always fascinated me and have complemented the rest of the city and the history going on within it very well.

As always, great descriptive work throughout.

#NetGalley #booktok#bookreview #goodreads #scifictionandfantasy @headodzeus

I will post on my book blog on Instagram (BookedBailey) on publication day.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

"City of Last Chances” by Adrian Tchaikovsky
⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
✈️ to: a city in a fantasy land 🏰
Publication Date: Today!

City of Last Chances was my first book by Adrian Tchaikovsky and after reading it, I’m fully convinced that he’s a talented writer but not fully convinced that I’ll read another one of his stories.

This book is essentially a series of POVs from people living in a occupied city. The premise is interesting. The writing is good. My issue is that I realized about mid way in that I didn’t care about any of the characters, was constantly losing track of who’s who, and honestly was a little bored.

There’s a lot to admire about the City of Last Chances, but the third time I fell asleep reading was my last chance at fully enjoying it.

All in all, the City of Last Chances is a little hard to follow and feels a bit disjointed (the common thread is the city), but if you can get past that you might enjoy it!

Ilmar is a mysterious city overtaken by the totalitarian Palleseen. However, when their Sage-Archivist dies, an investigation launches to track down the culprit as the city teeters precariously on the brink of rebellion.

In City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky, the author crafts an intricate, complex story—so complex, in fact, that I had a difficult time getting immersed in it because I was too busy keeping track of all the information being thrown at me.

There’s a whopping twelve different factions going on in the city, and on top of that, each chapter in the first half follows a different POV. I found myself unable to get attached to most of the characters, but by far my favorite had to be Yasnic, the last priest of his religion who must cater to his dying god.

Overall, at its core, City of Last Chances is an ambitious book that explores colonialism, faith, and cultural identity, but its story unfortunately buckles under the weight of its large character cast and numerous plot threads.

3.5 stars Full video review: https://youtu.be/9EqU91LXvGY
Well this book was a bit complicated. It was not an easy book to get into but possibly one of the most realistic feeling fantasy settings. I say this because how the narrative and actions played out seem like something that would happen in our own world not from lack of magicalness. Though the magic you see throughout the book isn't quite what your used to as well. The city the book takes place in has become industrialized and thus magic has a more distilled for to help the industry.
This book is a multi(very) POV cast. We do mostly follow a main group of seven(?) people throughout. However other characters do come and go as they encounter these main people. Possibly if we had been more focused on a few versus such a broad cast and look out it could have flowed smoother. The chapters I enjoyed the most were the "Mosaics" which gave a birds eye view of the events happening and showing several people instead of the one character focused chapters.

Thank you to Head of Zeus for an ARC of City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky in return for an honest review.
I am an avid reader of fantasy but for some reason I had never read anything by Adrian Tchaikovsky. So when I saw City of Last Chances on #Netgalley I thought here's my chance. Having just finished City of Last Chances I'm so looking forward to reading more by him.
City of Last Chances is Ilmar - a benighted city crushed under the occupation of the Palleseen whose remit seems to be to drain all joy & frivolity from life. The story is no sweet & light fairytale but a dark & grim tale of a city about to collapse under the weight of occupation & its own corruption.
The characters are as varied as the strands of the story, magicians, refugees, gods, priests, criminals, students, and ordinary people who have simply run out of chances & choices. The mad tapestry of this story sweeps you along & I found myself wishing for happier outcomes for some of the characters. There is a cynical humour permeating the storyline which eases the grimness of some of the storylines.
I am in awe of the world building but it is not a sprawling epic build but a dark, claustrophobic one.
I found City of Last Chances to be an enthralling book that grabs you & throws you out at the end gasping for breath. This might have been my first AT book but it certainly won't be my last.
#Netgalley #Adrian Tchaikovsky #City of Last Chances

Adrian Tchaikovsky returns to fantasy writing with his new novel City of Last Chances, released today, 8th December 2022. In this epic novel he introduces us to the city of Ilmar, a city under the yoke of an invading force. The Palleseen occupiers claim to want to better the lives of the inhabitants of the city, but from the underbelly of society, through students, to the highest and richest echelons, the people of Ilmar have other ideas.

This new novel is Tchaikovsky tackling many of the issues of inequality and injustice we see in society today, through the lens of magic, mystery and murder. He mixes ideas of class war and unionisation with demons shackled to the whims of man, magic talismans of great (and low) power, and a mysterious cluster of trees called the Anchorwood that permit select travellers to use pathways that only appear in the light of the full moon.

The characters are what make this novel for me. The carnival of colour that Tchaikovsky brings to the page with his writing is, frankly, magical. Each chapter brings us a different perspective, and we flit from lovable rogue to lapsed priest, starry eyed student to merciless killer, returning to pick up threads from one or another to successfully weave a beautiful tapestry. There are character descriptions so vivid that you know each individual. One character in particular evokes a visceral response in me so great that even thinking their name now causes my gorge to rise. Read City of Last Chances and you'll find out exactly who I mean.

While some readers may be put off by the size of the Dramatis Personae at the start of the book, or the various factions listed before we even hit chapter one, please listen to me when I say that it is wholly worth the time to read City of Last Chances. Despite the apparent size of the cast, each named individual is fully-formed and you can easily fall in love - or hate - with any number of them.

This is more than a simple fantasy novel. Tchaikovsky brings us plotlines of rebellion, desperation, and politics, strewn liberally around the magic and mystery that permeate the buildings and streets of Ilmar. There are levels to City of Last Chances that every reader can dive in to, whether they are here for the romance, the murder, or the beauty of Tchaikovsky's writing. At it's simplest this is a tale of people trying to find home, whether the one they came from or one they need to create for themselves, but there is so much more that you can find in these pages.

While I am determined to stay spoiler free, as this masterpiece deserves, the denouement of the novel is everything I could have asked for. The disparate trails that Tchaikovsky has been laying throughout the almost 500 pages of the novel are pulled together and wrapped up nicely, giving each character their time to shine and a (not necessarily happy) ending.

Adrian Tchaikovsky's breadth of language, and the fluidity and poetry with which he wields words, leave me staggered with every new book he releases - and he writes fast, and often. Whether the epic space opera of the Children of Time series, the world-spanning fantasy of the Echoes of the Fall, his prose is always strong and emotive, and City of Last Chances is no exception to this rule. I stood on the streets of Ilmar with the characters, I flew across the rooftops of the city as we travelled from one location to another. I plotted and schemed and marched. I cannot wait to do it all again, and again, as I am sure this novel will only get better with a return visit.

While Tchaikovsky is famed for his series, and the world-building here would certainly end itself to more stories in these worlds, as a standalone novel it does superbly. Which is not to say that I don't want more, as I certainly do want to visit Ilmar again, and the Anchorwood, and maybe even Allor or Divinate or Lor or... well, you get the idea. Whether you enjoy swords and sorcery novels, or want political intrigue and backstabbing, City of Last Chances is a novel that is well worth picking up.

This was an incredibly engaging and thought-provoking book, and honestly unlike anything else I've read. This book is concept driven first, followed by some masterful character crafting, though not in the way you might expect.
This book depicts snapshots of life from various people living in Ilmar, as the powder-keg of a city experiences the spark of revolution. Considering how little time (relatively speaking) is spent with each individual character of this large cast, Tchaikovsky does an incredible job painting a portrait of the lives of each character, and the swirling revolutionary factions that flow through the city. They all feel fully realized and distinct.
For the right reader, this is going to be an incredible read, but it won't be for everyone. It is slow and progresses through a very unconventional plot. But the world-building is fantastic and creates a rich and fantastical exploration of oppression, despair, revolution, and hope.
Thanks to NetGalley for this eARC that I received in exchange for an honest review!

Excellently written and constructed "biography of a revolution" in a fantasy milieu. The characters are original, highly varied, and believable in context. I particularly enjoyed the realistically factional nature of the uprising. The students, the academics, the unions, the nobles, the priests, the underworld crooks (and, in this context, the ghosts and other supernatural characters) - all had their own, differing motivations that came together, in a typically imperfect manner, when the spark was lit.
Very readable, and full of original touches.

I (on my rating system) gave the City of Last Chances 3.5 stars

The synopsis really pulled me into this book. I am someone who enjoys world building and I think that was well done in this novel. Additionally, I enjoyed the writing, too, as it was quite easy to read and Tchaikovsky's prose are quite stunning. My issue is unfortunately no knock to A.T., rather, I just am not a fan of multi-pov stories. I am someone who enjoys first person POV from 1 or occasially 2 characters? I felt that at times I was just reading a little quicker to get back to the POV's I enjoyed & because of that didn't let certain hints or plot details sit with me long enough. I have not read many portal fantasies but I found this to be what I was assume is a standard "portal" style plot?

Overall, if you find the synopsis intriguing, you enjoy Multi-POV's, and want to read some great (annotation worthy) writing, I would say to give this a go!

***3.0 Stars***

Overall,
In general I really enjoy Adrian Tchaikovsky as an author and I really enjoyed his Children of Time series. I wanted to love this book, however it missed the mark for me. As someone who loves meaty deep lore fantasy and science fiction, I thoroughly enjoy diving into a new world and meeting a host of characters. Where I think this book falls through is that while it has a whole host of characters and a interesting world, the fact that its a standalone hurts it. I found that there were so many character perspectives that it was difficult to invest fully in any of them. I think if this was given a bit more room to breathe and was perhaps a duology or even a trilogy, where we spent just a bit more time with the characters I may have cared more. As it is there were several parts where I was truly struggling to continue. All in all I think there will definitely be people who love this book, and it wont stop me from reading more from this author.

***I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley and HeadOfZeus, in exchange for my free and honest review. Thank you for the opportunity to read this book early #CityOfLastChances #NetGalley ***

Since getting back into sci-fi and fantasy a few years ago, Adrian Tchaikovsky has been one of my favorite discoveries. I’ve loved nearly everything I’ve read of his—including my favorite novellas of both this year and last year, plus the terrific Children of Time that seems the most popular entry point into his work—and his output is so high that there’s never a risk of running out of things to read. And so when I saw that he was diving back into fantasy with City of Last Chances, it was easy to put in an ARC request.

City of Last Chances takes place in the city of Ilmar, a secondary-world fantasy locale with a couple uncanny elements that go beyond run-of-the-mill magic: the Reproach that captures the minds of most who dare enter, and the Anchorwood that bends the rules of space to connect to far-distant outposts, but with great cost to those not sufficiently warded. But there’s much more than strange magic stirring up trouble in Ilmar—Palleseen occupiers are working to stamp out local religion and culture in their endless pursuit of perfection, and the occupation has made for strange bedfellows among traditionally unfriendly neighbors, with natives and foreigners, workers and nobles, thieves and academics finding themselves thrown together under the Palleseen thumb. City of Last Chances provides point-of-view characters from each of those groups, along with a few from the occupiers themselves, as it places the tiles for a revolutionary mosaic.

Usually, I find that having too many perspectives too quickly can make it hard to immerse in a new story, but despite having double-digit POV characters before returning to anyone previously introduced, there’s something about the writing style that makes it work. It’s written with a sort of detachment that tells the reader about the characters as pieces of an overall story, rather than really putting the reader into the minds of the characters—we see everyone’s motivations, but we’re not swept away by them, rather invited to consider each as from above. This makes for a less disorienting introduction, and the skill in storytelling makes it easy to keep reading to see what shape the mosaic will take.

And while all the pieces are there for an epic, City of Last Chances doesn’t progress the way you’d expect from a traditional epic fantasy. There is no main character, no hero destined to pull the bickering factions together and overcome the evil. Rather, there are a lot of groups working at cross-purposes for self-interested reasons. Those disparate goals and actions still lead inexorably to uprising, but there’s nothing neat about their path, and there’s certainly nothing neat about the resolution.

A clear strength of City of Last Chances is shining an unflattering light on all the pieces of rebellion that can’t quite manage to work together, but the main weakness is the other side of the same coin: being above it all makes it hard to be emotionally invested in it all. Reading City of Last Chances made me think back on all the previous Tchaikovsky works I’d read, and the way he so often makes the detached writing style work for him. It perfectly captured the ennui of a battered veteran of the time wars or the hollow depression of an anthropologist with an emotion-blocking device, it delivered the clinical tone needed to describe the evolution of a race of spiders, and here it allowed readers to navigate myriad factions without being overwhelmed. But though he’s made it work in so many contexts, there are some tasks for which it’s just not the right tool, and that became clear in the final chapters of City of Last Chances. It’s simply hard to invest in so many self-interested characters. And the few who are devout—the priest of a dying religion, a starry-eyed revolutionary undergraduate—invite pity more than empathy; the poor foolish souls just don’t have the foresight to disentangle themselves from hopeless causes. It’s a cynicism that’s apt for 90% of the novel, but feeling it through 100% just takes so much sting out of the climax.

Make no mistake—this is still an excellent novel. Readers who enjoy Tchaikovsky’s style and don’t mind a proliferation of POVs are bound to enjoy it. The prose is engaging and the social commentary is often perfectly on point. And the failure to bring everything together for an emotionally satisfying finish is as much feature as it is bug. While a few may play at it, there are no heroes in this book, and we should expect no heroism. In the cold light of day, the occupiers are morally bankrupt, and the resistance is too. That’s the story, and it’s well-told and interesting from start to finish—good enough that I’ve flirted with a five-star rating even without the emotional impact I’d have liked. But for all its praiseworthy elements, there’s just not quite enough soul to move it into the pantheon of favorites. I appreciated it, and I enjoyed it, but for all its many strengths, it didn’t fully capture my heart.

Recommended if you like: messy revolutions, mosaic novels.

Overall rating: 16 of Tar Vol’s 20. Four stars on Goodreads.

Thank you Head of Zeus and NetGalley for the arc of City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

For years I have been determined to but, never quite got round to reading any of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s books. I own a few but, they have languished on my TBR as I remained daunted by the reputation and my impression of him as an author. City of Last Chances is not your traditional fantasy, there is no beginning, middle or end. There is just Ilmar, a city on the precipice, teetering in the balance of domination or revolution.

This is not a story driven by a protagonist as traditionally known, Ilmar is the protagonist. Tchaikovsky makes Ilmar animate. A city where all that is magical, industrial, mysterious, tragic but, oh so alive, swirl together to create a heaving, political, maelstrom that pulses with life.

Dominated by The Sway, the people of Ilmar see the erasure of their culture, their rights, their magic and their lives, day by day, as The Sway endeavour to achieve the perfection of order that is their life blood. e chafing under their rule as their culture is erased. As students have always done throughout history, the students of Gownhall dream of revolution, workers long for the rights that bring freedom, people long for escape from the tyranny of logical perfection and the people of The Wood..they long for something…but, only they know what that is.

Ilmar is a pot ready to boil, conflict is bubbling below the surface forcing revolution to the boil as the desire to to break free of The Sway’s colonialism and forced destruction of Ilmar’s culture, history, religions, language, rights and even music.

The characters in this book are a whole population, each chapter focusing anew or suddenly returning to a character, in what at first glance appears to be without order or purpose but, thus us part of the journey as their stories flow and meld, bringing to life the passion, colour and magic that is Ilmar.

This book is one that can be read again and again, and there will still be new strands, nuances and meaning to be gleaned from it. This book is a total onion of an historical fantasy Revolution take; it has a multitude of layers, depth, scope and a bite that will bring tears to your eyes.

4.5 stars that I will probably up to 5 on my next read!

Wow. This book took me by surprise. It's hard to write a review on it without spoilers. It was hard to get into at first, the writing style is different to any of Adrian Tchaikovsky's other novels (and I think I've read them all!) He really is a master of so many different styles and genres.

There's no real plot that I can describe other than a city occupied by an invading force, filled with rebel factions, and small events that paint a bigger picture of a city about to explode into madness. The city sits next to a portal to other worlds, and has collected a variety of inhabitants who we will follow, from very different backgrounds with very different motivations. There's mystery, magic, so much lore. Even though we don't leave the city, the tidbits we get about the greater world around us are alluring and create a vivid, tantalizing glimpse of what else is out there. The characters are all unique individuals with riveting personalities and stories, none of them are heroes, but they're all going to have an impact, one way or another. You just have to read it really!

I'm incredibly upset that this is currently written as a standalone. This is a world that I need to explore. I need to know what happens to these characters, I want to follow their journeys, I want to visit their homelands. Please write more in this world! Definitely a 5 star read for me.

There are not many books that will require me to have a second read to get a handle on that I would recommend without first doing that second read. But in Tchaikovsky's case, he has more than deserved day-and-date purchase from me. In that regard, I highly recommend City of Last Chances to anyone who is picking up fantasy for the first time.

For all its chaos of a multitude of characters and ever-changing viewpoints (better described in other reviews), Tchaikovsky has written a book about a world that only exists on exploitation: whether that is the citizens of Ilmar in their personal and business affairs, in Palleseen toward its neighbours and its own politics, or between a dying god and his only priest. You may expect a story with a clear sense of beginning, middle, and end and you will find some kind of that in here.

But this is a book that is taking a snapshot in time of a fantasy world with a very real sense that things often don't but can get better. Tchaikovsky is a brilliant writer, and he is a voracious writer, and for that I understand how this can be a - very - slow book; but if a portrait is a thousand words, this is a thousand portraits in a thousand words.

City of Last Chances is an ensemble lead portrait of a city teetering towards revolution while under occupation by the rule-obsessed Palleseens. Ilmar is a city of magic- backed up against the Anchorwood which, beyond its monster filled mists, contains gateways to other worlds- but also one of harsh reality. Labor tension is on the rise, the academics seem more interested in discussion and action, while the ousted aristocrats hunger for more power. All the while, the hand of Palleseen control grows only stronger. But then- a high stakes betting game goes wrong, a treasure is stolen, and a high ranking Palleeseen official is dead.
It’s just a small, strange occurrence but is it enough? Will revolution finally begin?

I really enjoyed this book. It has a sprawling cast but each chapter links back to the one behind in, despite following a different character, in a way that kept me from getting lost. There were so many excellent characters but my favorites were Lemya, a passionate student who becomes disillusioned by the realities of resistance but never looses her fervor, and Ruslov, a thug who falls in love with a poet and strikes an uncomfortable bargain with an inflexible god.

The book is far more about atmosphere and character than action- although there are some nice bits of it sprinkled along. It reminded me a good deal of Les Miserables, the book not the musical, but in a good way. While nothing in this rivals Hugo’s sewer tangent, the story takes it time in a similar way and has thematic echoes especially in how the story of the student revolutionaries unfolds.

I would recommend- I very much enjoyed it- but with the caveat that I think you need to be someone who enjoys a bit of dense, character-and-world driven fantasy.