City of Last Chances (The Tyrant Philosophers)

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If you have yet to try his works, City of Last Chances showcases his abilities incredibly well. From his prose and his wit to the sheer creativity of his worlds and characters, there is so much to marvel at here and I enjoyed it immensely. Want to help us defray the cost of domains, hosting, software, and postage for giveaways? Donate here: Then there is the structure. Every chapter for almost the first half of the book is narrated through the eyes of a different character. This makes the whole plot a bit convoluted, until everything becomes more clear in the second half. Ilmar is vividly alive with ideas, conflicts, and a sense of its own history – a truly breathtaking fantasy city, down every street a compelling story.' David Towsey I felt like there was much more story that could be told by the time I finished, but also felt that the ending was satisfying,

His characters are mostly well fleshed out and interesting, and that was not easy I guess, considering there is a myriad of them. These are just a few of the dozens of top quality characters this book boasts. Seeing their perspectives overlap and intertwine was so much fun, and it made the city really feel whole and alive. But as we get into the swing of things, we see the same faces circling around again and again, and eventually have some chapters told from the same perspective twice, and something begins to emerge. It's nothing so simple as a single narrative, but there are a lot of threads being pulled in complementary directions, and a general movement ripples out to affect all the characters we see, and things begin to happen in Ilmar.Fundamentally, that's what it is. An account of a stunningly wide variety of people's experiences in a city under occupation. And the differences of that experience... how one fact of existence can shatter and refract and become a hundred different perspectives on the same set of events, a thousand different responses.

It’s cold,’’ God said. ‘‘It’s so cold.’’ The divine presence was curled up on his shelf like an emaciated cat, and about the same size. He had shrunk since the night before…. Sometimes Yasnic could do with a little less God in his life. 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. Maģija un aizmirsti dievi te ir atliku likām, no viena piemirsta dieva var uzlādēt maģiskās baterijas pāris kārtībsargu maģiskajiem stekiem un Pal Impērija nekad nelaiž garām savu iespēju. Ilmar tauta saprot, ka vajag revolūciju, bet ar revolūcijām ir tā, ka nekad nesanāk laika un tās vienmēr var atlikt uz rītdienu. Šī grāmata parāda arī šīs rītdienas atnākšanu.A video review including this book will appear on my channel in the coming weeks, at https://youtube.com/chloefrizzle That being said, those external forces are something of a marmite aspect to the book. By the time I reached the end, I loved the role they had to play in the story, but they wouldn't be to everyone's taste, not least because they leave so much unknown and unresolved. They are a chaotic spectre hovering on the edge of reason and of the city, and to understand them would be to strip them of their magic, their mystique. But that absence of understanding is also an absence of resolution, and that isn't always everyone's cup of tea - especially when it feels, as this does, not like there areanswers but we just don't have them yet, but rather that there may be no answers at all. Some magic is beyond our knowledge, in this book and this world, and we must simply accept that. In many ways, the wood on the edge of the city and what lies beyond it, a portal to other worlds that is discussed by the characters in hushed whispers, with its strange guardians who operate on rules no one else understands, are an element of folklore, not of magic, in the way they act upon the story. Magic might have rules and explanations - folklore is deeper, older and more oblique. The people in question, the characters and perspectives, are what this book leans on most heavily. The cast is fantastic, and the way Tchaikovsky paints the picture of the city by weaving these characters and their experiences together is an absolute work of art. Mind Virus: The Reproach's curse is a fantasy version of this. Someone afflicted by the curse begins to believe themselves to be a member of the old Varatsin ducal court, hallucinates the Reproach as it was during Ilmar's medieval period, and tries to draw the uninfected into the curse by calling them ancient titles.

Besides these overt prejudices, the resistance also has its blind spots. One of my favorite moments is when we learn that the laborers, whom we’ve been conditioned to root for, are themselves oppressors, as what runs their mills are magically enslaved demons. And so we get sharply moving passages like this: This book, which is standalone, is set in a city that’s been under foreign occupation for several years. The occupiers have the goal of “perfecting” the world, so naturally anything not already “perfect” according to their rigid standards must be … perfected. Naturally this is hard on the populace. Body Surf: The reason why no-one ever kills an Indweller. The other Indwellers will demand compensation through someone else, preferably the slain Indweller's killer, wearing the dead Indweller's mask, which causes the Indweller's spirit to possess the new body. RUSLAV (Ruslav in Love Again, Ruslav's Master's Voice, Jem's Reasons for Leaving, Hospitality of the Varatsins, Ruslav in the Teeth, Nihilostes Loses A Convert, Chains, Price of Rope, Wings, The Bitter Sisters, The Dousing, Resurrections, Another Round).Badass Pacifist: After his life is saved by converting to Yasnic's religion, Ruslav is forced to become one, as committing violence will lead to his wounds reopening. This is best shown when God is forced to keep Ruslav alive after Yasnic's apostasy, which Ruslav puts to good use acting as a baton-proof human shield so the Gownhall students can rescue Ivarn. Despite the city's refugees, wanderers, murderers, madmen, fanatics and thieves, the catalyst, as always, will be the Anchorwood - that dark grove of trees, that primeval remnant, that portal, when the moon is full, to strange and distant shores.