City of Last Chances
Review: City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Is this book a socialist manifesto? Is it cosmic horror? Is it a ghost story? It almost tries to be too many things at once, although there’s definitely a strong vein of socialism running through it.
(I could, however, have done without the demon-summoning Roma analogues).
The city is definitely a place of lost chances. It’s a place of small gods. A place where sorcerers summon demons…and put them to work in dark, satanic mills (was Tchaikovsky thinking of that line?).
A place where all kinds of people kind of…end up. And a place that’s facing a weirdly atheist conquest, an artificial language (newspeak).
Maybe it’s actually dystopic fantasy.
Personally, I found this book entirely too…busy. Too many subgenres. (And perhaps a bit too similar to the recent work of Chandrasekera).
It’s not my kind of weird, but if you like books that pack in the weird, try this one.
I received a copy of this book in the Hugo packet.