Not sure why but this one is not grabbing me. The world building is fine, if overly complex, but the characters are not grabbing me. Calling this one at around 50 pages and may come back to later to try again.

This book honestly stands out a bit from all the other fantasy I've read this year, because of its structure and because of the ambitious and fascinating world the author created, but I think the execution didn't entirely work for me.

The first 40-50% feel like a collection of short stories all set in the same universe. Sure, there's some kind of red thread connecting them, but on the surface the stories don't seem related at all. We're introduced to a big cast of characters throughout these stories, and it isn't until we get further into the book that the connections begin to appear. I thought the second half was a lot better than the first, probably because I could see the plot and where everything was leading. That said, structuring the book this way allowed the author to show as many different parts of Ilmar, the titular city, that we maybe wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Ilmar makes for a great setting. It feels like any big city—a mish-mash of cultures and districts, and everyone is suffering under occupational rule. There are different refugee groups, gangs, religions being practiced in secret, and an oppressive regime trying to normalize it all so that everyone follows their standards. But even though there are different factions all supposedly working against the occupiers, the city isn't on the brink of revolution, until, suddenly, it is.

And if that doesn't sound complex enough, there's also the Reproach, a section of the city that will possess anyone who enters it long enough, and a forest that acts as a gateway to other worlds. I found Ilmar extremely compelling, but I also think the author maybe tried to do too much. Because the setting is so vast, it's difficult to focus on specific characters, which means I had less emotional attachment to the people I was supposed to care about. I do think this improves after we're done getting introduced to everything this world has to offer, however, and there were definitely characters that I cared about by the end. The story didn't unfold the way I expected it to, and the way it did might not satisfy everyone, but I think that is what sets it apart for me.

Interesting and original fantasy novel, well worth a look.

Difficult to describe, this fantasy novel deals - as the title suggests - with a city of different characters and races brought together under the occupation of an enemy force. The characters are well-developed and are the most important part of the story as they meet and plan in an atmosphere of magical objects, supernatural creatures and monsters. There's plenty of action, murder and mayhem. It's an entertaining experience and I will look into reading other works by this author. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Este es uno de esos casos donde la historia podría haber durado un puñado de páginas más, incluso haber sido una bilogía, y seguramente hubiera tenido sentido. Ilmar, la ciudad donde transcurre todos los acontecimientos de este libro se convierte en un personaje más de una narración de por sí compleja dado el gran número de nombres propios que aparecen y las acciones que todos ellos van tomando desde las primeras páginas.

Ilmar se encuentra bajo el yugo de unos invasores cuyo régimen tiránico tiene a la ciudadanía recluida y donde expresarse en contra de la norma significa acabar colgado de una soga. Esto también implica que la magia está perseguida y todo aquello para lo que se usa debe ser autorizado, igual que su aprendizaje. En el borde de Ilmar también hay una zona boscosa con un portal a otras realidades por las que se cuelan criaturas que pueden causar malentendidos y, por consiguiente, una guerra civil. Uno de esos sucesos inicia esta novela.

Al contrario de lo que me ha sucedido con la mayoría de las novelas de Tchaikovsky esta es una obra que me ha exigido gran atención durante buena parte de su lectura. Los puntos de vista son múltiples y variados, muy distintos entre sí, que van y vienen en ocasiones con un lapso importante. Sean mercaderes, magos, sacerdotes, refugiados, guerreros, etc. todos tienen sus intereses preconcebidos en esta disputa por el poder de la ciudad.

Por todo ello, mi lectura ha tenido muchos altibajos y en varias ocasiones tuve que retroceder un poco para situarme, algo apoyado por una escritura algo más cargada de lo habitual en sus novelas. La manera de enfocar la historia y las decisiones políticas intrínsecas a mucho de lo que aquí ocurre me ha recordado a la trilogía de La Era de la Locura de Joe Abercrombie, con la ventaja de que este utilizaba tres libros para algo que Tchaikovsky ha preferido meter en uno solo.

No puedo decir que vaya a ser mi novela favorita del autor, pero, aun con eso, sigue siendo un gran regreso a la fantasía por su parte. Un libro que pide paciencia en aras de la recompensa final.

Ilmar. City on the edge of … well, on the edge of a very strange forest. So much of what the city is comes from that proximity. Those desperate enough come there hoping to find a way through the trees to another place. Because, while most of the time it looks like a small copse through which you can see the other side, every now and then going into the woods will take you… elsewhere. That is, if you don’t get brutally killed by the forest guardians. You’ve bought a genuine ward to see you safe, of course?

Ilmar is also where the refugees came as each of their lands was taken over by the Palleseen, a nation obsessed with ‘perfection’ and determined to impose it on everyone else. So many fled to Ilmar, but now Ilmar too is occupied.

So it is against the strict rules and policing thereof that a disparate set of characters set about achieving their own aims. From rogues to scholars, priests and immigrants with mystical powers, this is a book with a huge cast. However, even as we follow each of their stories, separately and intertwined, the book isn’t really about them.

Is it about the city itself? Yes, and no. Certainly, the setting is fairly contained and yet encompasses as many social tiers as any city, plus a huge dollop of magic in various forms. Machinery is run by demons. Strange, masked figures come out of the woods. Artefacts from the old regime are melted down to extract their magic, used mainly for weapons for the occupying forces. And oh yeah, there’s just this whole section of the city that you Do Not Enter, because it’s… well, haunted is putting far too little emphasis on the weirdness. There’s a LOT going on, and your enjoyment will hinge greatly on how much you’re willing to accept the ‘melting pot’ of it all.

I’ve read a lot of mixed reviews about this one already, and mostly it seems that people were expecting epic fantasy and instead get quite a (geographically) contained tale that’s more about political manoeuvring than sword fights and monsters – although there are some of those, too. I can see how some would be disappointed not to see huge battles of magic, but rather a more realistic (urm, sort of!) scale of petty rebellions and everyone trying to eke out a life without being arrested for breaking some rule or other.

But, personally, I loved the contrast between the mundane – rules, regulations, power struggles between various factions – and the absolutely fantastical. This is a city seething with magic on all sides, topped with yet more brought in by every nation’s refugees, and then stamped down by the invading forces. That’s a powder-keg waiting to happen – in more ways than one! Viva la revolution?

Overall, this rewards just a little patience, and a bit of attention to the myriad threads. Or perhaps I want to say it’s a more mature read, choosing to focus on a level of ‘realism’ on top of the fantastical. Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed it, even while I’m disappointed that there’s not more of it all.

Ilmar is a city seething with tensions, set in fantastical world where magic exists and has been harnessed in different ways. The city has been under occupation by the Palleseen for the past three years. Ilmarians of all walks of life, criminal thugs, priests of nearly forgotten faiths, students and their wealthy families or bar keepers are all chafing under the occupation as they try to live their day to day lives, some focused on resistance, others just on surviving. A large multi-cultural city that is also at a nexus of worlds. The event that sets off the plot of the novel, is a Palleseen expedition setting off to enter the Anchorwood, a small grove of trees that is sometimes just that, and at other times a portal to other places.

Adrian Tchaikovsky's City of Last Chances is the story of one consequential gambling game held in a secret backroom of a bar, that causes a crises for all of the players and the city of Illmar. It begins with what feels like a daunting cast of characters all listed for the reader's reference. Fortunately, I found I did not need to reference this, as the earlier chapters tend to be focused on a single character at a time, giving us time to get to know them, their priorities, and an idea of their motivations and goals. All of them come off with some degree of depth, and we do see them grow or change based on the events. The heavily hinted event does come to pass, but concluded in ways that I did no expect.

In the world of Illmar demons can be contracted to labor in the industrial factories. One of the main weapons is a baton that can fire magical energy. Charms and wards can assist or bar as the user or creator needs. As a city with a long history, there is a cursed portion known at the Reproach that steals the minds of those who enter, but is full of abandoned wealth that the brave or desperate search. Artifacts or even former gods can be converted to magical energy that can be turned into the charms or simple magical chalk.

A story of crisis, centered on a mystery. Tchaikovsky presents a well realized world that will hopefully be revisited.

I'm a fan of Adrian Tchaikovsky and I love how he develops complex world and intriguing characters.
I fell in love with the cover and then I fell in love with this fascinating fantasy novel and the well plotted world.
Adrian Tchaikovsky is a master storyteller and delivered a great story that i strongly recommend as it's well plotted and entertaining.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you so much to Head of Zeus and NetGalley for an e-arc of this book.

Ugh.

When I first started this I thought I was in for a four or five star read. Unfortunately things unraveled at times. Then come come together. Un-ravel. Come together. Etc etc etc.

I quite like books with multiple POVs, but they usually book best in series where you get to know the characters and their stories, they don’t work so well in stand-alones and this is a good example of that.

When the sorry did come together I really enjoyed it, maybe it’s a book to come back to and re-read at a later time.

DNF @ around 50 pages

As excited as I was about starting this book. that quickly dwindled as I started reading it. The first few chapters are each focused on another character. While I found the characterisation of God somewhat amusing, there was nothing else in these pages that really grabbed my attention. Likely this is a story where things will fall together at the end. And while I usually like those kind of stories, with multiple characters, I do need to be interested in those characters. I was not one bit in any of these and so I decided to stop reading.

Ilmar has been known by many names, but most know it now as the City of Last Chances – and Adrian Tchaikovsky has woven it a tale of that and so much more.

Since its occupation by the Pellanese – 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.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is one of those staples on the science-fiction and fantasy scene, having won almost as many awards as he’s written books. And he’s putting all that skill to excellent work with City of Last Chances – building a world that felt so immersive that it’s genuinely taking me some time to pull myself back out of it, now that I’ve finished. The storytelling is the most immediate thing you’ll notice – each chapter follows a different character, with some breaks labelled Mosaics that give the reader a moment to see the overall state of the different stories being followed. It may feel daunting at first, falling straight into this huge world and needing to track different characters, but trust in the process – you end up with such a comprehensive view of a complicated story, and it never felt like work to follow it.

What you do get though, is to know a city and a set of characters that all feel – despite the fantastic setting – entirely human, and very real. The author describes in one chapter a set of paintings – small canvases, but epic scenes, with a knight dwarfed by darkness and yet resolute in his determination to face it down. His own words captured the feeling of this book best for me. I really loved it, thought it was executed so cleverly, and will be thinking about it for a long time yet.

I really struggled to read this book and tried going back to it several times. Sadly it just didn't work for me. It is such a dense novel with so many different characters that I struggled to keep track of who was who and what was going on.

I was delighted to read City of Last Chances having loved a lot of Adrian Tchaikovsky's science fiction in the past but never having picked up any of his fantasy.
I thought that the world of City of Last Chances had a huge number of fascinating details, you could tell a lot of thought had gone on in the setup, I particularly enjoyed some of the more...gallows humour elements (a joke that will only make sense to people who have already read at least the first section - I apologise). I also liked some of the demonic elements of the story which was probably my favourite plot point.
Overall I think I would have had a better reading experience had I picked up this book via audio as opposed to a physical copy. This is, I think, due to the fact that this book does have Tchaikovsky's tendency of overwriting slightly which can make it hard to follow various plot points and to stay engaged in larger periods of quite intense writing. I found myself drifting off at times and finding it quite difficult to figure out what was an aside and what was an important plot moment. This is something I've since found in other Tchaikovsky fantasy books so that might be a 'it's not you it's me' problem but I thought it worth mentioning.
If you're looking forward to this book and you've read and enjoyed this author's works in the past I think you'll likely enjoy this but if you do have the opportunity to read via audio that would be this reviewer's recommendation.
I received a free digital review copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and Head of Zeus for providing the ARC.

This was a really dense fantasy book and I struggled to get through it. Not the writer's fault - I actually found the story engaging - but just the sheer amount of detail and exposition makes it hard for me to wrap my brain around.

Overall, I thought the book was good, just maybe a bit too much for me.

A great read, the world building is phenomenal. A city with racial divides is conquered and under occupation, there's a magical way out of town but its literally insane. A man struggles with his homosexuality and discovers his love of art, and a priest sexes a demon to get away from God.

this is crazy and weird and unlike books ive read so far but it was so interested such an unexpected read theres lots characters and can be hard to keep track but i wsnt put off by that not every character is likable but thats part of the fun i think its a good book to try if your a fan of epic fantasy and dont mind so confusing elements at first i have a few books by him one my bookshelves that i handt got to reading yet but i would be interested to get to them now after reading this one

Dice Adrian Tchaikovsky que tiene mucho más éxito con la ciencia ficción que con la fantasía, así que debemos regocijarnos de que al menos encuentre hueco para publicar algo de fantasía de vez en cuando. Y City of Last Chances tiene muchos elementos que la hacen atractiva, aunque me temo que no es una obra fácilmente accesible.


Lo primero que nos encontramos al abrir el libro es un dramatis personae que echa un poco para atrás, pero para más inri conforme vamos leyendo los primeros capítulos la confusión va en aumento, porque el elenco de personajes es muy extenso y el autor no tiene piedad al lanzarlos la historia de la ciudad y los hechos y milagros de las muchas facciones que pueblan sus páginas. El estilo es en ocasiones farragoso, de tener que tirar de diccionario con relativa frecuencia.

Parece que solo expongo cosas negativas de la obra y no es así, es un libro que me ha gustado, pero es cierto que hay que tener en cuenta todas estas peculiaridades para poder disfrutarlo, si no, nos vamos a encontrar con un muro que escalar.

Una vez que nos hemos acostumbrado a la forma de narrar la historia, con continuos cambios en los puntos de vista del que cuenta la historia enlazados como si de un travelling cinematográfico se tratase, seremos testigos del derroche de imaginación del que hace gala el autor, así como del mensaje político subyacente que tiene. Un amigo lo ha descrito como “la última trilogía de Abercrombie pero resumida en un solo libro”, y sin querer quitarle la razón, veo City of Last Chances como una extensión de lo que el autor ya trató en Ogres o en Cage of Souls, por ejemplo. Las revueltas obreras contra el poder establecido, pero claro, todo esto embellecido con un bosque mágico que te lleva a otros lugares si tienes la protección necesaria, unos invasores que pretenden estandarizar con su cultura “superior” a todos los colonizados, un pequeño Dios con una congregación reducida a una sola persona, y los muchísimos más personajes que me dejo en el tintero.

City of Last Chances es una novela mosaico, donde cada capítulo es una pequeña tesela que se va anexando a las ya existentes para ir agrandando el resultado. Hay que entrar en su juego porque hasta que no ves bastantes de estas partes no empiezas a comprender la magnitud de la obra, pero con implicación y paciencia, nos encontramos ante una obra de fantasía que da pie también a la reflexión.

Review copy (eARC) provided via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was really excited to read this book based on what I've heard about the author and this being the Goldsboro Dec 2022 GSFF pick.

Looking back, I enjoyed the novel, but I was surprised at how dense it was. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I think a second read is required before I can fully appreciate the beauty of this story. I would nonetheless recommend this one. 3.5/5 rounded up because I can't wait to read it again.

An epic tale. It draws you in to other worlds and their totally strange way of life. It’s complex and needs concentration but is a totally captivating read. There appear to be different races of people, demons and immortals, living in a world with a portal to other worlds. Very ‘Twilight Zone’. Loved it. I’m sure you will too. Recommended read.

City of Last Chances is a dense 'hard' fantasy that requires a bit of work, but is worth persevering with.

It begins with a city under occupation, on the brink of a rebellion...

As a reader, you're dropped in the middle of the story, and from chapter to chapter are passed from character to character. The characters are all interesting, but none scream 'main character with emotional story where you are rooting for them to win' at first glance. It means it's a little harder to connect with the book.

But Tchaikovsky has created a very solid fantasy world. You can sense it living and breathing - you get a real sense of its history, as well as its present. You know that each character you meet believes their story is the main agenda. They have a life that goes on beyond the pages.

This did take me a while to read as the plot slowly gained momentum, but I'm glad I took the journey. Tchaikovsky is, as always, an excellent writer, who can take risks and offer challenging reads.

City of Last Chances is the kind of fantasy I currently like best: compact in scope yet telling a large story. Ilmar is a city occupied by Palleseen invaders, a people obsessed with perfection, be it language, thoughts, or behaviour. Religion or magic aren’t allowed—gods don’t exist in their world view—and dissidents are submitted to correction, i.e. hangings.

Unfortunately for them, Ilmar is a messy city, with a forest that is a portal to unknown worlds filled with monsters and protected by mysterious people; a district full of ghosts that take over the living; many magical systems, and demons powering the factories. There are several resistance factions waffling about, crime lords and aristocrats that have their own ideas of how to get rid of the occupiers, and seditious ideas spreading among the university students.

Seemingly random events spark a revolution—or try to. People are swept into events they have no control over, with no one knowing what’s really happening or if these actions are wise. When the dust settles, nothing has changed.

The story is told through a large cast of characters. Some play a greater role in the events—or rather, are impacted more by them—some appear briefly, only to instantly die. Many of them have their own agendas and all are powerless to influence the world around them. Some rise above their selfishness, but no one emerges as the hero of the day.

With such a large cast, no one becomes the main character, which for me was the weakness of the book. When a new character after another was introduced, with most of them not driving the narrative in any way, it was difficult to take interest in them. The few that reappeared several times were great, complex characters, and the story would’ve been sharper and more impactful if the story had concentrated only on them.

My favourite was Yasnic, a priest and only follower of an exacting god. He starts as a downtrodden and weak, but manages to carve out a slightly better life for him and his god in the end—the only character with some sort of growth arc. I could’ve read a whole book from his point of view. Other characters were either tragic, or cunning enough to be able to return to their earlier lives after the upheavals.

The pace was slow. Descriptions of even minor characters are detailed, and the narrator directs the story rather bluntly at times. Everything is duplicated. There are two mysterious districts, two McGuffins—the revolution and a protective amulet—every character has their parallel or counterpart, and even some events, like hangings, are repeated.

Small, random events don’t so much cause the revolution as they give the characters a reason to take part in it, even if it’s not in their interest. A tighter narrative concentrating on the few main characters would’ve made a better reading experience. But the ending was satisfying, which made up for the slowness of the book. If you like character-driven fantasy, this is for you.