City of Last Chances (The Tyrant Philosophers)

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Unfortunately I also had some issues with this book. For starters, especially the first 40%, is really slow. And that slow pace, combined with the dense prose made it a struggle for me to get through it.

I was super excited to read this book after reading that amazing synopsis, I mean this sounded like a book that would be right up my alley. Portals to different worlds, a tyrannical regime and occupying force, a dark and magical setting, all of the things that I really enjoy in a fantasy read to be honest. And to top it off, one of my favorite authors as the writer of the story? Yes, you could say I was pretty excited to sit down with this book. 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 Ilmari intolerance for their occupiers sparks with every tighten of the thumbscrew and surely the sparks will ignite soon.

The novel is set in the titular city of Ilmar, suffering under the heavy boot of an occupation force left over from the city’s conquest three years earlier by the Palleseen, a people who seek “perfection” in themselves and others via “correct principles of law and thought.” While the city seems stable on the surface, it seethes with anger, resentment, greed, and ambition as various factions have their own view of what resistance looks like and who should lead any eventual rebellion should one occur, as well as who should benefit from it. These factions are not new-born from the conquest, but are long-standing opposed forces in the city: the criminal underworld, who have found little difference in the scorn with which they are treated by the overthrown duke and his aristocracy or the victorious Palleseen; the Armigers, the old families more concerned with a return to power rather than a return to independence; and the Siblingries, the factory workers who toil for the conquerors as they did for the upper classes before and feel oppressed by both. In the mix are the idealistic students of Gownhall University; the Allorwen, a downtrodden and mistrusted group of refugees from a land conquered earlier by the Palleseen; and most mysterious of all, the Indwellers, the enigmatic people who control the ways in and out of the Anchorwood, an ancient grove that acts as a portal through to other worlds for those who can pay the price of safe transport. A video review including this book will appear on my channel in the coming weeks, at https://youtube.com/chloefrizzle State Sec: The School of Correct Speech serves as this for the Palleseen occupation, charged with the prosecution of magicians and religious figures, torturing captives and rooting out rebel cells. Accordingly, they are possibly the Palleseen School least-liked by the Ilmari, and even the other departments of the Pals dislike them for their power and ruthless enforcement of doctrine. The Anchorwood is a grove of trees at the heart of the Ilmar that pre-dates the city itself. This grove of trees is, at the right time, a magical door to a distant (and still relatively unknown) land that can only be reached with the help of protective magical artefacts and a native guide from the mysterious world on other side. To those that know Adrian's work a little better - yes, there are bugs and insects scattered intermittently throughout the story. I would be worried if there wasn't at this point.

Picture a city under occupation and on the verge of revolution. Imagine the streets teeming with discontent and bubbling with anger. Delve into each shadowed alcove and underground lair to discern who will light the first match and set fire to the masses, urging them to overrule the Palleseen regime. Yasnic; a beggar priest of a dying religion. He is the last believer in a God that appears only to the faithful. The God in question is a withered little gnome of a deity that is constantly demanding alms of his only remaining priest. HELLGRAM (Jem's Reasons for Leaving, The Hospitality of the Varatsins, Ruslav in the Teeth, Breaking Things, Hellgram's War, Unity and Division, Resurrections).

Eldritch Location: The Anchorwood definitely counts, being a Portal Crossroad World filled with bizarre armored fish-headed monsters who eat anyone who enters with a protective "passport". This book was one I had ridiculously high hopes for and may have had my expectations too highly placed. I remained impressed by the rich world that was developed and intrigued by the criminal workings, elite rule, and struggling masses within it. I did, however, feel a little distanced from many of the principal characters, for some reason, bonding more with their many plights than with their individual personalities. This did not ruin my overall enjoyment but I merely found it to be unlike the book I had predicted I would read. Since its occupation by the Pellenese – a force determined to fit the world into their vision of perfection – Ilmar has found itself holding an uneasy peace. Already a city on edge, with entire neighborhoods lost to curses, given over to refugees or allocated to demon-assisted industry, the addition of an occupying force has done nothing to make that peace easier to keep. When a murder happens in the mysterious forest that serves as a portal to better places, tensions threaten to boil over – and the reader will have a ringside seat to every moment. City Of Last Chances sits very well within its fantasy lane, and although there is magic, mysticism and machinations to explore, Tchaikovsky elects instead to use these as a platform to deliver symbolic tales of rebellion and dissent, that celebrate the unexpected delights of collaboration without conformity.

Perhaps my favourite character dynamic was Yasnic and … God. Yes, you read that right. God used to be worshipped everywhere in Ilmar yet his followers are dwindling to the point where God can only be seen by his high priest, Yasnic. Following him has rules. Very strict rules. But if you think a cranky old man perching himself on Yasnic’s shoulder and demanding fealty is the strangest character quirk in the novel, you really have another thing coming. Tchaikovsky’s characters are wondrous. The shifting perspectives blend in the mystical Ilmari melting pot and I was always wanting to read more. Not that there wasn’t a part of him that wouldn’t have shaken that demon’s taloned hand like a brother, but that would have been a step too far. And so he watched the beast being enslaved to them ills again and knew that even as he fought every day for a better life for his people, he was a collaborator in a larger war. And he hated it. The list of characters and factions is quite large and this makes eye-reading of this book much preferred to an audiobook. The descriptions are often quite dense and without infodumps, one have often to guess what is behind the introduced concepts, like, e.g. this piece from the early chapter (most places like Gownhall or people like Allorwen aren’t described in earlier paragraphs, a reader learns what is what on a fly):Ruslav; a street thug of moderate renown. His character undergoes multiple huge changes over the course of the story, and despite his straight forward set up, he became one of the most unique and nuanced characters of the book. Thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.