City of Last Chances (2022, Head of Zeus)
English language
Published Dec. 18, 2022 by Head of Zeus.
I really think this is one of my favourite AT novels I have read.
My simple pitch, this is the fantasy novel equivalent of Fredy Perlmans "Worker-student action committees".
full stop.
This is actually a really good book, but for some reason I struggled a lot with the format, in which each chapter is told from a different character's perspective and frequently only a character that we meet for one or two chapters. Yes, there are a few "main" characters that we get to come back to again and again, but you don't really start revisiting them until later in the book and so for the first part it's kind of an endless parade of new points of view. Took me quite a while to wade through those to where everything clicked for me and I was able to keep my attention on the book for more than a single chapter at a time.
Overall, it has a good arc, a good plot, good character development etc though and I enjoyed the story quite a lot by the time I reached …
This is actually a really good book, but for some reason I struggled a lot with the format, in which each chapter is told from a different character's perspective and frequently only a character that we meet for one or two chapters. Yes, there are a few "main" characters that we get to come back to again and again, but you don't really start revisiting them until later in the book and so for the first part it's kind of an endless parade of new points of view. Took me quite a while to wade through those to where everything clicked for me and I was able to keep my attention on the book for more than a single chapter at a time.
Overall, it has a good arc, a good plot, good character development etc though and I enjoyed the story quite a lot by the time I reached the end. Just tough going at the start, and possibly only for me?
There were a lot of scenes I loved, and the sequence in the beginning where the narrative is passed along a chain of serially coinciding characters is wonderful. When I read the reunion near the end, I literally exclaimed "Hahaha, yes!" As a whole, it felt a touch rambly, but I have no regrets. One area where Tchaikovsky excels is departing from (or maybe just ignoring?) genre tropes, and this is no exception.
