DNF @ 26%

Three days in, I've only made it to 26%, and I realised I don’t actually care to find out what happens next.

The way this story is told keeps you frozen as a remote observer. I felt like I was floating above the city, checking in and out with these characters at the whim of the narrator. This narrator seems to make himself more present as the story evolves, and I felt myself being removed more from the story itself.

I am disappointed. I feel like I’ve held Tchaikovsky in such esteem despite never having read any of his work. He’s such a giant in the fantasy realm, and I’ve always looked forward to reading his books. I was so excited to get this eARC and just wish it had been a better fit.

Ahoy there mateys! I enjoyed this novel even if I have no idea what the point of it was.  The story takes place in a city called Ilmar otherwise known as The City of Last Chances.  It is a city in turmoil.  Foreign occupiers with the goal of "Perfection" are in control everywhere except the Anchorwood.  This wood has a door that opens up to other dimensions? I am not sure how or why it works.  There are resistance factions in Ilmar but none work together.

Frankly, in trying to explain this, it really seems impossible to.  The characters and city itself are bizarre and unlikeable.  The reader is kinda tossed in over their head and trying to stay afloat.  There doesn't seem to be a single character who isn't flawed or self-absorbed.  The magic is a minor aspect in all the politicking.  Yet I couldn't stop reading and wanted to know what happened next.  Turns out the ending does not really explain anything.  I was flummoxed but rather ended up being overall content with me reading journey.  Yasnic was me favourite character followed by Hellsgram.

I would read more set in this world.  Even if it confuses me, it is not boring.  Arrr!

"City of Last Chances" is an absolutely brilliant story (and is brilliantly written, as you'd expect). I found it very complicated at first though (what feels like a huge character list and totally new ideas that took some adjusting to), and that made it difficult to become absorbed in the "City", but it didn't take too long for me to lose myself. A gentler introduction to the world and characters would have made this a 5 star read.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley. This review was written voluntarily and is entirely my own, unbiased, opinion.

A magical reality, a city that not always was a city. Worlds within worlds. A revolution. This book doesn’t warm itself to you. It’s a top down view of a revolution. Main characters bedamned. No one has plot armour. This book isnt about anyone but the city itself, which I suppose I should have understood given the title.

The city of Illmare has had a reputation long before the Palleseens invaded. Before the city itself even grew to this gross height and mass. This city has had a reputation from when it was a forest and a town around to. To now this sprawling mass of alleyways, districts, ruins and palaces. Whose to way what happens on the other side of those trees. When the moon is bright and travellers are abroad. To some this is an escape from life under Palleseen occupation. For the Palleseens it is an affront to their view of the world. Something out of order waiting to be put right. This book is about a city full of fate, magic, and ghosts beginning to shake off the controlling hands of the occupiers. It’s about different factions working with and against each other. Both good and awful people. It’s about worlds and even universes beyond the city itself. Because at it’s core this city is only a waypoint. But for some it’s their last chance.

Huge thanks to @headofzeus for including me in this blog tour !

I've not read any of Tchaikovsky's fantasy work, though I imagine it's as solid as his other genre work, and the early funny stuff is probably riddled with the enjoyment of, and the slow dismantling of tropes. City Of Last Chances feels a little like his Shards Of Earth Trilogy, taking a well-worn theme (here a city under occupation), and teasing at some of the ideas in genre fiction. In particular here is the idea of pantheism, and multiple religions, which cannot help but bring to mind Pratchett's Small Gods, not least with a protagonist who is a non-violent and reflective priest saddled with seeing his God all the time (a very Pratchett concept). There is also the idea of a brutally ideological monotheistic occupation, stamping out other belief systems - despite there being truth in all of them - ossified in red tape and competing ministries of misery.

All that said, I found City Of Last Chances pretty rough going for the first third. Tchaikovsky passes a narrative baton between his chapters, introducing characters we may not see again. It takes quite some time to circle around to revisiting the one we started with. It's not an unusual technique, but there is so much info dumped it starts to become a bit of a swamp particularly when he is fleshing out each chapter's protagonist. Perhaps his biggest problem stems from a strength, his initial character, the priest Yasric with no followers stuck with his god, is a terrific character and it takes quite some time to warm to any others. Yasnic is the closest thing the book has to a protagonist, so I wonder if Tchaikovsky holds him at arm's length precisely because he does not want the book to be about him, but rather about an uprising.

Once everything comes together in the middle of the book the rest unravels compellingly. There is an issue around the politics and future of this city once the shackles of occupation are thrown off. There are aspects of the storytelling that reminded me of Perdido Street Station, and throw a revolution in and perhaps I wanted to see the politics of the kind of revolution that occurs (the book does stab at this with what are basically Union organisers). Its certainly not starry-eyed about it, but probably sits in the revolt first, work it out later camp (historically an unreliable strategy). But a good slab of fantasy that engages with its ideas, and has a few killer ideas in the process. I did read it in something resembling one sitting so....

City of Last Chances

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Full disclosure: I only got through half of this book before posting because this is a dense, layered fantasy novel. What I’ve read is enough to let you know that you should pick up a copy, even if, like me, you’ve never read Adrian Tchaikovsky before, because it’s a beautifully immersive standalone novel.

Why it’s great:
- It’s an epic fantasy novel where (so far) there is not a hero’s journey. All of the action is centered around the occupation of a city, Ilmar, by an outside power, Pallesand, and the simmering need to revolt amongst various factions in the city.
- The novel has a huge cast of characters and each chapter switches to a different point of view. Some people may find the multiple POVs confusing, but it allows the reader to learn everyone’s backstory and role in the city’s conflict while also advancing the plot.
- Themes of colonization, revolution, corruption, and power are central to the novel. The occupying force has criminalized many forms of religious and artistic expression and enforced rigid language standards to raise Ilmar to their scientific standards of perfection. This has marginalized multiple factions in Ilmar, who all agree that the Pallesand regime needs to be toppled, but can’t agree how and when this needs to happen and who should have power instead. There are similarities to real-world instances of imperialism and revolution, but every nation, culture, and religion feels distinctly original.
- There are some really gnarly monsters and magical objects and areas that make this easy to visualize as a very, very expensive miniseries.

This book is out today, 12/8, as an ebook. I believe it’s already available in hardback in the UK and will be out as a physical book in the US in May 2023. You may need to Google to figure out when it’s available for your location because it’s from a small publisher. I recommend this for people who like the themes and setting of Babel and the politics-first, magic-second emphasis of Game of Thrones.

Many thanks to @headofzeus and @netgalley for letting me read and review an eARC of this book. This review is not sponsored, and all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Having read many Tchaikovsky's book before, so I knew to expect amazing things, but this book simply blew me away.

The City of last chances follows a wide range of characters all living together in a city under occupation. Some characters want a revolution, to kick the invaders out, some are the occupying force who simply want to bring the Perfection of their rule to one and all, and some are simply out for themselves. The book starts with quite the event to light the spark of what will come, though if you think you can guess what will actually happen, you will be shocked.

I loved this book, and I mean LOVED. The characters are so realistic, they make foolish mistakes (but not the kind that simply fills a plot hole.) They love, lust, feud, want vengeance, and scheme and plot. All the good things that you want your characters to do to string us along by our noses. Once again, another great book.

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.