City of Last Chances (The Tyrant Philosophers)

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Pyrrhic Victory: The rebellion ultimately turns out to be one of these for the Pals. They succeed in putting down the students' revolt and the Siblingries' march, but they lose a lot of their men to the students, the Siblingries and the Reproach with little chance of getting replacements in the near future, the factories that produce materials for their war efforts are going to be out of commission for a long while, and the wider resistance movement of Telmark still exists. This is an epic drimdark fantasy from Adrian Tchaikovsky, currently a standalone. I read it as a part of the monthly reading for March 2023 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group. The book is already on the longlist of BSFA and possibly will be nominated for other awards in 2023. As an aside, readers who enjoyed Head of Zeus’ brilliant The Hood by Lavie Tidhar in 2021 will feel very much at home in Ilmar. Certainly, Tchaikovsky’s latest fantasy tale scratched a mystical dark wood itch I didn’t realise I’d been needing scratching. 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. Portal Crossroad World: The Anchorwood becomes one on nights when the moon is full. Travelling through it is extremely dangerous due to the monsters that live there, so unless you're an extremely capable fighter (such as Hellgram), a traveler will need powerful, rare protective charms to pass through.

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.Weird Trade Union: Although the Siblingries mostly function like normal unions, the fact that the factories they work in are mostly driven by demons means that they include hellieurs-sorcerers specializing in making contracts with demons-in their ranks.

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. This whole story takes place in a city called Ilmar, otherwise known as the “City of Last Chances”. Ilmar is in the process of being colonised and occupied by a invading peoples known as the Palleseen. The city and it’s people are walking the line between total assimilation into the “Palleseen Sway” and all-out riots-in-the-streets revolution. Those different cultures and beliefs also create a good foundation for the tension that underlies the whole novel beyond the obviously occupiers-occupied conflict as the various factions battle for power and long-standing mistrust of “the other” (of which there are many) rises up again and again. The “underdog uprising” always lies on the horizon of promise, but the way in which everyone has their own agenda here — as groups and/or as individuals — constantly interferes with any attempt at serious revolution, as well as allowing room for thoughtful exploration of serious topics such as labor-owner conflict, the refugee experience, fascism, colonialism, the desperation of poverty, and more. There are two superbly unique regions of the city that really help emphasise the story’s themes of colonisation and cultural decay, that being the Anchorwood and the Reproach.This book reads like a collection of interconnected short stories. Each chapter, we are jumping POV to a different denizen of the city with fingers in different pies. As the book continues, the stories become more interconnected and we get repeats of the same characters. Here's some of my suggested characters to follow. Just start with whomever you're most intrigued by.