There’s an Ursula Le Guin-like grace to his storytelling, to the shifting of cadences. The threads of multiple extraneous plotlines intersect deliberately and invisibly to bring about a bigger picture, dimensioned in beautiful complexity.' - SciFiNow PREVIOUS TITLES: This finesse and clarity of detail in the world building is the rock on which Tchaikovsky has built the City of Last Chances. His deliciously descriptive prose has an unmatched ability to paint every corner of the worlds in his imagination with the kind of detail that invites the reader to become lovingly lost in an unfamiliar landscape and yet able to navigate every street by knowing the texture of every brick and the sound of every footstep. 'Adrian Tchaikovsky is a name synonymous with the kind of world-building that SFF demands. 'An intriguing tangle, dense, dark, ingenious, ironic, complex, often funny, and always smart.' - Locus Magazine making a location the main character is a considerable challenge and it's testament to Tchaikovsky's skill that he can make it work.' - SFX 'Paints a vivid detailed backdrop and populates it with colorful personalities and elaborate religious, political and economic systems. 'A gritty adventure fantasy of uncommon breadth, fashioning a universe brimming with magic and treachery… an accomplished, imaginative fantasy novel.' -Foreword starred review 'Clever and engaging fantasy.' - Booklist starred review ' Highly recommended for lovers of big sprawling sagas who don’t want to wait years for a climactic conclusion.' - Library Journal ' Rich, inventive worldbuilding and nuanced intrigues will have fantasy readers on the edges of their seats.' - Publishers Weekly 'A refreshingly new take on post-dystopia civilizations, with the smartest evolutionary worldbuilding you'll ever read' Peter F. 'Entertaining, smart, surprising and unexpectedly human' Patrick Ness 'Brilliant science fiction and far out worldbuilding' James McAvoy Ilmar, some say, is the worst place in the world and the gateway to a thousand worse places. What will be the spark that lights the conflagration?ĭespite 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. The city chafes under the heavy hand of the Palleseen occupation, the choke-hold of its criminal underworld, the boot of its factory owners, the weight of its wretched poor and the burden of its ancient curse. There has always been a darkness to Ilmar, but never more so than now. Clarke winner Adrian Tchaikovsky's triumphant return to fantasy with a darkly inventive portrait of a city under occupation and on the verge of revolution.

City of last chances adrian tchaikovsky