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Revelation Space #0.5
Chasm City
The once-utopian Chasm City—a doomed human settlement on an otherwise inhospitable planet—has been overrun by a virus known as the Melding Plague, capable of infecting any body, organic or computerized. Now, with the entire city corrupted—from the people to the very buildings they inhabit—only the most wretched sort of existence remains. For security operative Tanner Mirabel, it is the landscape of nightmares through which he searches for a low-life postmortal killer. But the stakes are raised when his search brings him face to face with a centuries-old atrocity that history would rather forget.
694 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published May 1, 2001
719 people are currently reading
16033 people want to read
About the author
Alastair Reynolds
312 books9,269 followersI'm Al, I used to be a space scientist, and now I'm a writer, although for a time the two careers ran in parallel. I started off publishing short stories in the British SF magazine Interzone in the early 90s, then eventually branched into novels. I write about a novel a year and try to write a few short stories as well. Some of my books and stories are set in a consistent future named after Revelation Space, the first novel, but I've done a lot of other things as well and I like to keep things fresh between books.
I was born in Wales, but raised in Cornwall, and then spent time in the north of England and Scotland. I moved to the Netherlands to continue my science career and stayed there for a very long time, before eventually returning to Wales.
In my spare time I am a very keen runner, and I also enjoying hill-walking, birdwatching, horse-riding, guitar and model-making. I also dabble with paints now and then. I met my wife in the Netherlands through a mutual interest in climbing and we married back in Wales. We live surrounded by hills, woods and wildlife, and not too much excitement.
I was born in Wales, but raised in Cornwall, and then spent time in the north of England and Scotland. I moved to the Netherlands to continue my science career and stayed there for a very long time, before eventually returning to Wales.
In my spare time I am a very keen runner, and I also enjoying hill-walking, birdwatching, horse-riding, guitar and model-making. I also dabble with paints now and then. I met my wife in the Netherlands through a mutual interest in climbing and we married back in Wales. We live surrounded by hills, woods and wildlife, and not too much excitement.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,263 reviews
June 15, 2023
Get some illegal implants if you dare
Welcome to the fabulous, mutated, degenerated, cyberpunk dystopian nightmare where the elite is celebrating with sick games while the base is rotting away, good old Roman decadence style. Want some cheap, illegal, operation as a welcome gift to make sure that you don´t grey/green goo too much and make the place even slimier and grittier?
A fallen utopia
Possibly one of the darkest future city planning scenarios, it reminded me of China Mieville and shorter descriptions of decay and madness in other Sci-Fi works, but both the sheer range and the plot importance in the series and its other parts make it outstanding. Such an interesting place, partly dominated by steampunk and primitive trade and barter economy, some areas ruled by gangs of hybrids, and wait what is lurking in the abyss.
Playing god is always fun
Oh, the hybrids, often seen, but also used in a more positive way, but Reynolds goes full frontal pessimism and makes them . Brin did it more optimistic with dolphins and chimps, Hamilton had them at least with not enough conscience to make them feel bad about it, and strangely not many authors thought about complex backstories (to come in one of the next parts) and histories of human whatever hybrids or completely new creations and chimeras.
Alien drugs are to die for
Aliens and drugs, a match made in psychedelic heaven or hell, depending on the standpoint, human or alien brain chemistry and how it reacts to the drug, addiction potential, and sense of responsibility, although if one deals with the devil, the devil doesn´t change, she/ he/it/ the hive mind changes you. Many plot options, the dealers being the humans or aliens, the influence on trade and politics, and, most important, it´s influence on the character´s personality, motivations, and abilities, thereby changing progress and payoff depending on the individual influence of the substance on setting and protagonists. And, most important, abuse, artificial scarcity, misuse, monopolization, and profiteering, basically the same as today in real life on bad, old earth, just with far cooler products.
Future sects and cults may be even wackier than the nowaday standards
A complex second story deals with ideology and faith, inspiring to think about how future sects could develop their narrative, adding more Sci-Fi instead of old school hairy prophet stories with fantasy elements. What happens if believers go more sciency, of course just in their fairytales, not using the scientific method or doing research themselves or similar dangerous stuff, is a thought experiment of vast dimensions and, in this case, distances. Taking 1000 or 5000 years, one can easily imagine a colony or even a solar system where they teach kids that their holy woman (who knows?)/man was asteroid mining when an alien spaceship gave her/him a tip to go to an artifact where she/ he opened a wormhole to… I don´t see much real difference, although they may certainly cut the hard science part for better and easier understanding.
Cool as heck, fast paced, and absolutely fascinating
As always with Reynolds, the finetuning is immense, no more reading horsepower could be tickled out of this beast of a book, and all of the mentioned elements, the city, second story, drugs, and protagonist´s life, are perfectly interlinked and offer a perfect combination of quick cuts, Hollywood style dialogues and action sequences, cliffhangers, epic worldbuilding, and dry wit.
Not so hard hard sci fi many will appreciate
It hasn´t as many hard science elements as in his other works, this is why I lower the too specific warning to a medium. We dive deeper into Reynolds´ world, although the main, meta, space opera story doesn´t really continue as a part of the Revelation Space series in this one and it´s more of an interlude. But that makes it perfectly readable for the ones who aren´t so much in the complexity and science of his other novels and like a good suspense, crime, thriller, whodunnit story. Oh, I forgot to mention that, he uses such a plot device with many flashbacks too.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
Welcome to the fabulous, mutated, degenerated, cyberpunk dystopian nightmare where the elite is celebrating with sick games while the base is rotting away, good old Roman decadence style. Want some cheap, illegal, operation as a welcome gift to make sure that you don´t grey/green goo too much and make the place even slimier and grittier?
A fallen utopia
Possibly one of the darkest future city planning scenarios, it reminded me of China Mieville and shorter descriptions of decay and madness in other Sci-Fi works, but both the sheer range and the plot importance in the series and its other parts make it outstanding. Such an interesting place, partly dominated by steampunk and primitive trade and barter economy, some areas ruled by gangs of hybrids, and wait what is lurking in the abyss.
Playing god is always fun
Oh, the hybrids, often seen, but also used in a more positive way, but Reynolds goes full frontal pessimism and makes them . Brin did it more optimistic with dolphins and chimps, Hamilton had them at least with not enough conscience to make them feel bad about it, and strangely not many authors thought about complex backstories (to come in one of the next parts) and histories of human whatever hybrids or completely new creations and chimeras.
Alien drugs are to die for
Aliens and drugs, a match made in psychedelic heaven or hell, depending on the standpoint, human or alien brain chemistry and how it reacts to the drug, addiction potential, and sense of responsibility, although if one deals with the devil, the devil doesn´t change, she/ he/it/ the hive mind changes you. Many plot options, the dealers being the humans or aliens, the influence on trade and politics, and, most important, it´s influence on the character´s personality, motivations, and abilities, thereby changing progress and payoff depending on the individual influence of the substance on setting and protagonists. And, most important, abuse, artificial scarcity, misuse, monopolization, and profiteering, basically the same as today in real life on bad, old earth, just with far cooler products.
Future sects and cults may be even wackier than the nowaday standards
A complex second story deals with ideology and faith, inspiring to think about how future sects could develop their narrative, adding more Sci-Fi instead of old school hairy prophet stories with fantasy elements. What happens if believers go more sciency, of course just in their fairytales, not using the scientific method or doing research themselves or similar dangerous stuff, is a thought experiment of vast dimensions and, in this case, distances. Taking 1000 or 5000 years, one can easily imagine a colony or even a solar system where they teach kids that their holy woman (who knows?)/man was asteroid mining when an alien spaceship gave her/him a tip to go to an artifact where she/ he opened a wormhole to… I don´t see much real difference, although they may certainly cut the hard science part for better and easier understanding.
Cool as heck, fast paced, and absolutely fascinating
As always with Reynolds, the finetuning is immense, no more reading horsepower could be tickled out of this beast of a book, and all of the mentioned elements, the city, second story, drugs, and protagonist´s life, are perfectly interlinked and offer a perfect combination of quick cuts, Hollywood style dialogues and action sequences, cliffhangers, epic worldbuilding, and dry wit.
Not so hard hard sci fi many will appreciate
It hasn´t as many hard science elements as in his other works, this is why I lower the too specific warning to a medium. We dive deeper into Reynolds´ world, although the main, meta, space opera story doesn´t really continue as a part of the Revelation Space series in this one and it´s more of an interlude. But that makes it perfectly readable for the ones who aren´t so much in the complexity and science of his other novels and like a good suspense, crime, thriller, whodunnit story. Oh, I forgot to mention that, he uses such a plot device with many flashbacks too.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
September 27, 2016
Have you ever read for so long that your shoulder seizes up, and you have to stretch, but you do it one arm at a time so you can keep reading with your other hand? That happened to me while reading Chasm City. Even physical pain could not make me put this book down- I was getting to work half awake from my late nights with this one, and hanging out for my lunch breaks so I could race through a few more pages.
While the rest of the Revelation Space series deals with big ticket narrative items- One existential threat to human existence, please! – Chasm City is smaller scale, and is comprised of two separate narratives. The first follows a security operative, Tanner Mirabel, as he hunts a fugitive through what was once humanity’s greatest and most advanced civilisation, now reduced to a tangled, twisted slum by a disease that preys on nanotechnology. The second is centered several hundred years prior on a group of slow colony ships spending decades in deep space on their way to a new world, and one of their crewmembers, a young man named Sky Haussmann. Between Tanner and Hausmann Reynolds sketches a vivid and brutal future, and a surprising story of revenge, betrayal and the consequences of relentless ambition.
Reynolds briskly flogs the story along, never letting up the tension, or slackening the flow of brilliant ideas. He works from a fairly hard-SF mindset, so most of the tech in Chasm City is pretty plausible, ranging from nanotech ‘medichines’ in people’s blood to gigantic sub-light ships that take decades to cross the expanses between stars.
I loved this book. I thought about it for days after I had read it, and my memories of its stand-out scenes still send shivers up my sci-fi loving spine. Chasm City is, in my opinion, a near perfect work of SF, melding the brilliant ideas and faraway worlds SF does so well with a strong narrative and sharp prose style that the genre sometimes lacks.
Reynolds has written some really good stuff, but for this reader Chasm City is his dark and atmospheric crown, the high water mark of a deep and rewarding body of work.
This is space opera at its most operatic, and Reynolds hits (and holds) all the high notes.
While the rest of the Revelation Space series deals with big ticket narrative items- One existential threat to human existence, please! – Chasm City is smaller scale, and is comprised of two separate narratives. The first follows a security operative, Tanner Mirabel, as he hunts a fugitive through what was once humanity’s greatest and most advanced civilisation, now reduced to a tangled, twisted slum by a disease that preys on nanotechnology. The second is centered several hundred years prior on a group of slow colony ships spending decades in deep space on their way to a new world, and one of their crewmembers, a young man named Sky Haussmann. Between Tanner and Hausmann Reynolds sketches a vivid and brutal future, and a surprising story of revenge, betrayal and the consequences of relentless ambition.
Reynolds briskly flogs the story along, never letting up the tension, or slackening the flow of brilliant ideas. He works from a fairly hard-SF mindset, so most of the tech in Chasm City is pretty plausible, ranging from nanotech ‘medichines’ in people’s blood to gigantic sub-light ships that take decades to cross the expanses between stars.
I loved this book. I thought about it for days after I had read it, and my memories of its stand-out scenes still send shivers up my sci-fi loving spine. Chasm City is, in my opinion, a near perfect work of SF, melding the brilliant ideas and faraway worlds SF does so well with a strong narrative and sharp prose style that the genre sometimes lacks.
Reynolds has written some really good stuff, but for this reader Chasm City is his dark and atmospheric crown, the high water mark of a deep and rewarding body of work.
This is space opera at its most operatic, and Reynolds hits (and holds) all the high notes.
June 25, 2015
“I’ve been sent here to kill someone who probably doesn’t deserve it, and my only justification for it is some absurd adherence to a code of honour no one here understands or even respects.”While reading the book I was a little bothered by the protagonist's motivation which did not make a lot of sense to me. Suddenly Alastair Reynolds addressed my problem directly and things begin to fall into place. This book is a very intricately plotted sf novel with strong element of a noir thriller, but the emphasis is definitely on the sci-fi. On the face of it, the book may initially seem like a straightforward story of revenge. The main character Tanner Mirabel is chasing a man who killed his best friend and the love of his life but made the mistake of leaving him alive. The chase requires quite a bit of interstellar travel, part of which is even on a space elevator which brings to mind Arthur C. Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise . The structure of the book is almost linear but not quite, as two different stands of flashback sequences are also woven into the main story arc. In lesser hands this sort of skipping back and forth along the timeline can cause a lot of confusion for the readers, but kudos to Mr. Reynolds for the clarity of his writing, even without any chapter labeling the reader is never confused.
In spite of the crime fiction influence the sci-fi aspect of the story is thankfully the strongest element. Reynolds is at the forefront of the sf genre for a reason, here is an author who is seemingly put upon the earth to write sf, it is either coded in his DNA or God is a sf fan, take your pick. While the story is not epic in scale as it mainly focuses on the protagonist’s adventures it is set in a brilliantly imagined universe. Chasm City is set in the **Rev space** universe but is not a continuation of that book. It is basically a standalone with brief mentions of some things from that book. Most of the book is set in the titular Chasm City, an amazing place where buildings and machinery are infected with a plague that infect nanomachines and mutate them into weird nightmarishly shaped things. What it does to people I will leave you to discover for yourself.
What makes Reynolds stand out from most other sf writers today is that he can spin a great yarn, he knows his science very well, and he cares about creating believable and interesting characters with real motivations. Most importantly for sf, he is extremely good at world building, creating astounding yet believable and vivid places and life forms, if you are looking for escapism he is your man.
There are quite a few scientists who are writing sf but (IMO) Reynolds is the best story teller and prose stylist among them. His characters do not simply wear white hats or black hats, they tend to have quite believable motivations. His prose is accessible without coming across as having been dumbed down for the semi-literates. He even slipped in the occasional flashes of humor, mostly through ironic dialogues, and the end of the book even includes some lyrical passages.
Who would I recommend this book to?
You.
Basically you, who is reading this review. If you are interested enough to read this review this far this book is for you!
January 28, 2019
One of the big contributing factors to this novel’s success is the atmosphere that Reynolds injects into his Revelation Space books. I love this series of books, and Chasm City in particular. I was pretty invested in this story, but boy was it an emotional roller coaster. The author does not shy away from the darkness.
The abstract (moral) theme that Reynolds brings to the fore here resonated strongly with me. I also found the build up nice and suspenseful, and I quite liked the resolution even though it didn’t come as a big surprise. I don’t think it is intended to be one; there is sufficient foreshadowing as to where things are possibly heading.
I read this in the order that it was published (as opposed to chronologically). In other words, I read this on the back of Revelation Space, even though it isn’t a sequel. It’s interesting to note that it’s a very different type of story than the main story arc. As such, it wasn’t quite what I had expected. It’s much more contained, and concerns itself with a mystery on a much more intimate scale than the vast sprawling space epics that make up the rest of the original “trilogy”. That said, it still has enough sense of wonder and action to keep Revelation Space fans satisfied.
Suffice to say: I was not disappointed. I fully recommend the novel and the whole Revelation Space series to fans of Science Fiction in general, but especially if you don’t mind a bit of darkness in your fiction.
Now if only the author will revisit this Universe, it’s been a while.
5 Stars
Added to Favourites
Update
As of 2018 there is another Revelation Space novel out, namely Elysium Fire.
The abstract (moral) theme that Reynolds brings to the fore here resonated strongly with me. I also found the build up nice and suspenseful, and I quite liked the resolution even though it didn’t come as a big surprise. I don’t think it is intended to be one; there is sufficient foreshadowing as to where things are possibly heading.
I read this in the order that it was published (as opposed to chronologically). In other words, I read this on the back of Revelation Space, even though it isn’t a sequel. It’s interesting to note that it’s a very different type of story than the main story arc. As such, it wasn’t quite what I had expected. It’s much more contained, and concerns itself with a mystery on a much more intimate scale than the vast sprawling space epics that make up the rest of the original “trilogy”. That said, it still has enough sense of wonder and action to keep Revelation Space fans satisfied.
Suffice to say: I was not disappointed. I fully recommend the novel and the whole Revelation Space series to fans of Science Fiction in general, but especially if you don’t mind a bit of darkness in your fiction.
Now if only the author will revisit this Universe, it’s been a while.
5 Stars
Added to Favourites
Update
As of 2018 there is another Revelation Space novel out, namely Elysium Fire.
September 6, 2024
3.5 stars
Chasm City is the sequel to Revelation Space but works fine as a standalone.
*****
Chasm City follows two main characters via a narrative in which one man, Tanner Mirabel, has visions of another man, Sky Haussmann.
Chronologically, the story begins in the 26th century, when Earth launches a fleet of generation starships to establish a colony on a distant planet.
The ships carry humans in reefersleep (hibernation), who will be revived when the ships reach their destination, hundreds of years after the launch.
Live crews man the vessels and monitor the sleepers.
Following an attempted sabotage on one of the starships, a man named Sky Haussman becomes the vessel's head of security.
Sky has an agenda and does unspeakable things to (eventually) become the ship's captain and advance his personal interests.
After the starships reach their final destination, named Sky's Edge, Haussmann is ultimately convicted and executed for his crimes. By then, Haussmann has become a cult leader with a fanatical following, and his fans carry and spread a nanovirus that gives people visions of Sky and his life.
The other main character, Tanner Mirabel, is a former soldier who lives in Sky's Edge hundreds of years after Haussmann was executed. Like many people on Sky's Edge, Mirabel is infected with the nanovirus.
Thus Tanner has visions of Sky whenever he falls asleep. Tanner works as head of security for a barbarous arms dealer called Cahuella, a sadistic brute who's made many enemies.
One of Cahuella's foes is a wealthy citizen called Argent Reivich, who blames Cahuella for the death of his family. Cahuella learns that Reivich means to kill him, so the arms dealer and his security chief go on alert and prepare for the attack.
The attack occurs, things go wrong, and security chief Tanner vows to kill Reivich.
As things pan out, Tanner follows Reivich to Chasm City on a planet called Yellowstone; this necessitates a decades-long voyage that requires travelers to enter reefersleep. The hibernation causes partial amnesia, so once Tanner awakens, he needs rehab before he sets off to bag his quarry.
Tanner's quest in Chasm City is hampered by the fact that the region has become infected with the Melding Plague. The plague infects machines of all kinds, including humans with biomechanical body parts.....
......and/or people with internal nanobots.
The Melding Plague causes these people to mutate in bizarre and hideous ways.
Thus most of Chasm City is a disgusting ground-level slum inhabited by the dregs of society.
By contrast, the relatively few wealthy people in Chasm City - who've had their 'mechanics' removed - live in elevated homes in the canopy.
Much of the story is an epic chase in which Tanner gets into one dangerous situation after another as he tries to find and kill Reivich. Tanner meets some people who hinder him and some people who help him, including a few unusual and attractive women.
Scenes of Tanner's murderous quest alternate with scenes of Sky's life, which Tanner sees whenever he nods off. Thus we follow Sky's increasingly horrendous escapades from childhood through adulthood.
This is a bare bones description of the plot, which is enhanced by elaborate world-building and descriptions of futuristic weapons, technology, and novel beings - such as pig people. My favorite lifeforms are the hamadryads, snake-like creatures who grow to hundreds of meters in length. When hamadryads approach adulthood, they wrap themselves around trees and meld with the trunks, becoming part of the structure of the plant.
The story is convoluted and action-packed, with a diverse array of characters - some human, some animal, and some other. Neither of the main characters is a likeable guy, and one is downright disgusting and despicable (in case you need to know).
I enjoyed the book, and especially liked the imaginative worlds created by the author.
You can follow my reviews at https://reviewsbybarbsaffer.blogspot....
March 26, 2012
This novel tried my patience. It was a struggle to plough through these 600+ pages, with seemingly no payoff at the end to warrant reams and reams of not-particularly-active "action" and a plot twist that could be seen a thousand miles away.
Too much description, scenery-setting, exposition, people talking without purpose. Too many damned words that contributes little to the reader's understanding of the world, its history, etc. Ultimate fail: what should be background overwhelms the foreground.
And the HOKEY DIALOGUE! along the lines of "Ha ha, I am eeevil, this is my eevil plan, now whatcha gonna do about it?" "You won't get away with this!" "Oh but I will! Watch me!" Really?!
The characters, the characters. A loose collection of cardboard to hang dialogue on. They do not live, nor breathe, nor have any life of their own aside from the author's every manipulation.
And finally, I take issue with the moral stance encapsulated in the plot. If the question is, How much good must an evil man do to redeem himself? where was the "good" done to warrant that redemption?*
The author is attempting a complex untrustworthy-narrator story. The potential exists buried deep within, but this novel does not successfully convey the nuanced dissonance that raises red flags for readers to follow. Instead, it is clumsy; events are either melodramatically telegraphed or arose seemingly out of no where.
I give it TWO STARS for further delving into the Revelation Space world, and for being well-written at a sentence-by-sentence level, but needs much editing and plot-tightening to become a truly engaging novel.
SPOILER RANT
*Well, if the transformation is from sociopath with a Vision, to smaller-time weapons dealer who arguably killed more people and was even more sadistic to boot, to taking on another personality that is bent on a revenge killing... How has this man changed to warrant his continued life and the final chapters describing him in terms of the redeemed anti-hero?! So he changed from someone who would torture a subordinate to death for a well-intentioned mistake, to someone who would still kill and kill, but now occasionally has twinges of conscience. Wow... what transformations! So the elaborate human-hunting game in Chasm City is his attempt to "equalize the playing field" between Canopy & Mulch. What a humanitarian.
Too much description, scenery-setting, exposition, people talking without purpose. Too many damned words that contributes little to the reader's understanding of the world, its history, etc. Ultimate fail: what should be background overwhelms the foreground.
And the HOKEY DIALOGUE! along the lines of "Ha ha, I am eeevil, this is my eevil plan, now whatcha gonna do about it?" "You won't get away with this!" "Oh but I will! Watch me!" Really?!
The characters, the characters. A loose collection of cardboard to hang dialogue on. They do not live, nor breathe, nor have any life of their own aside from the author's every manipulation.
And finally, I take issue with the moral stance encapsulated in the plot. If the question is, How much good must an evil man do to redeem himself? where was the "good" done to warrant that redemption?*
The author is attempting a complex untrustworthy-narrator story. The potential exists buried deep within, but this novel does not successfully convey the nuanced dissonance that raises red flags for readers to follow. Instead, it is clumsy; events are either melodramatically telegraphed or arose seemingly out of no where.
I give it TWO STARS for further delving into the Revelation Space world, and for being well-written at a sentence-by-sentence level, but needs much editing and plot-tightening to become a truly engaging novel.
SPOILER RANT
*Well, if the transformation is from sociopath with a Vision, to smaller-time weapons dealer who arguably killed more people and was even more sadistic to boot, to taking on another personality that is bent on a revenge killing... How has this man changed to warrant his continued life and the final chapters describing him in terms of the redeemed anti-hero?! So he changed from someone who would torture a subordinate to death for a well-intentioned mistake, to someone who would still kill and kill, but now occasionally has twinges of conscience. Wow... what transformations! So the elaborate human-hunting game in Chasm City is his attempt to "equalize the playing field" between Canopy & Mulch. What a humanitarian.
September 16, 2011
Is this what a China Miéville novel would be like if China Miéville wasn't so much with the prose? Because like China, Alastair Reynolds is totally horny for the Big Idea (and perhaps even better than him at actually providing a sort of logical justification for all the weird and wacky world-building he does, though that simply might be a circumstance of his preferred genre -- hard sci-fi -- more or less demanding that kind of effort from an author.) (Also he is an ex-scientist of some sort.)
So, yeah, Chasm City, which various blogs convinced me was a great place to start with the author, is full of ambitious sci-fi storytelling, some of it familiar, some of it fresh and fascinating, all of it fairly well "explained" with convincing-sounding science-y justifications, or at least as convincing as you can get when you are talking about nano-machine plagues that reshape and mutate entire space colonies. Cool ideas here include an in-depth consideration of a generation ship-type mission, a different take on cybernetic implants, musings on the psychological impact of virtual immortality and a richly imagined post-plague dystopia.
The prose and plotting knitting all those ideas together isn't quite as compelling, though. Reynolds is very much in the mold of, say, an Iain M. Banks, but doesn't have the same literary chops. So basically, we've got a fairly standard vendetta plot, populated by one-dee characters (including a protagonist who arguably has no personality at all -- conceptual spoiler alert!), plot twists that are overly-telegraphed and ponderously over-explained, and just... terrible, terrible dialogue. Not just the expository stuff. The snappy banter like "Try anything and the only kind of composing you'll be doing is DE-composing!" (Said, obviously, to a composer.)
I still liked it. Pretty much. It is very long, and I confess that I have had my patience tested by this and other "space opera" adventures that are long on incident and short on substance; I somehow tend to find them totally awesome and totally boring at the same time (which is probably why I gravitate toward Miéville, who loves layering his books with meaty philosophical and political concepts... that and the whole "he can write interesting prose" thing).
I'm going to read more though. This one was fun. I do with he would publish something with fewer than 600 pages. Just as an experiment.
So, yeah, Chasm City, which various blogs convinced me was a great place to start with the author, is full of ambitious sci-fi storytelling, some of it familiar, some of it fresh and fascinating, all of it fairly well "explained" with convincing-sounding science-y justifications, or at least as convincing as you can get when you are talking about nano-machine plagues that reshape and mutate entire space colonies. Cool ideas here include an in-depth consideration of a generation ship-type mission, a different take on cybernetic implants, musings on the psychological impact of virtual immortality and a richly imagined post-plague dystopia.
The prose and plotting knitting all those ideas together isn't quite as compelling, though. Reynolds is very much in the mold of, say, an Iain M. Banks, but doesn't have the same literary chops. So basically, we've got a fairly standard vendetta plot, populated by one-dee characters (including a protagonist who arguably has no personality at all -- conceptual spoiler alert!), plot twists that are overly-telegraphed and ponderously over-explained, and just... terrible, terrible dialogue. Not just the expository stuff. The snappy banter like "Try anything and the only kind of composing you'll be doing is DE-composing!" (Said, obviously, to a composer.)
I still liked it. Pretty much. It is very long, and I confess that I have had my patience tested by this and other "space opera" adventures that are long on incident and short on substance; I somehow tend to find them totally awesome and totally boring at the same time (which is probably why I gravitate toward Miéville, who loves layering his books with meaty philosophical and political concepts... that and the whole "he can write interesting prose" thing).
I'm going to read more though. This one was fun. I do with he would publish something with fewer than 600 pages. Just as an experiment.
August 4, 2013
Chasm City. Originally settled by self-replicating robots carrying the genetic material to construct humans on site ahead of a more conventional colonisation. A city built around a chasm that spews gas and steam that is harnessed to generate energy and atmosphere. A city that experienced a 200 year utopia known as the Belle Epoche where technology advanced to the stage where implants and nanotechnology made immortality viable. A city where buildings were grown and designed by nano machinery. A city where citizens could transform their bodies within days into human/animal blends or even upload their memories and lives into machines for safekeeping.
But then came the Melding Plague. A virus that specifically attacked technology. A virus that was a chimera of machinery and biology that melded implants and machines to flesh. The virus was fatal, killing the host. And nano machinery that made art of buildings was infected to transform the city into something grotesque and treelike.
Almost overnight everyone on Yellowstone either removed the implants they relied on or became dead - or at leasts not exactly alive. The City's society collapsed and reformed itself into a state divided by class. The aristocrats who live in the Canopy - and everyone else living in squalor on the ground.
Into this background comes our main protagonist Tanner Mirabel, a mercenary hunting his employer's killers from the giant serpent infested Jungles of Sky's Edge to the plague infested Canopy of Chasm City to the very maw of hell itself.
The plot was intriguing, the characters were interesting and if Chasm City wasn't fascinating enough on it's own we also get the back story of the first generation ships to leave the Solar System on a centuries long mission to colonize Journey's End or what would become more commonly known as Sky's Edge. We see this journey through the eyes of arguable the most intriguing character of the book, Sky Haussmann, Captain of the Santiego in a story that will see us encounter among other things, psychotic dolphins, cyborg terrorists, a ghost ship, betrayals and atrocity - and that's not even the best parts.
Like the first Revelation Space book, the first half of the book was build up with the second half ramping up the pace with twists and counter twists that will have your mouth hanging open - well mine was anyway.
This story was all sorts of cool, projecting a very goth vibe with the long high collared trench coats and big guns blazing from the hips.
Alistair Reynolds has me on the hook.
4 stars
Edit
There are some books that I enjoy reading at the time, but over time fade into Meh. And then there are those books I enjoy while reading them and then, over time, stay with me, ageing and maturing like a fine wine. Chasm City is definitely the latter. Like the melding plague, it has grown a life of its own in my memory to insinuate an extra star in this review. It is my favourite book in the series and so earns its place on my favourites shelf.
5 stars
But then came the Melding Plague. A virus that specifically attacked technology. A virus that was a chimera of machinery and biology that melded implants and machines to flesh. The virus was fatal, killing the host. And nano machinery that made art of buildings was infected to transform the city into something grotesque and treelike.
Almost overnight everyone on Yellowstone either removed the implants they relied on or became dead - or at leasts not exactly alive. The City's society collapsed and reformed itself into a state divided by class. The aristocrats who live in the Canopy - and everyone else living in squalor on the ground.
Into this background comes our main protagonist Tanner Mirabel, a mercenary hunting his employer's killers from the giant serpent infested Jungles of Sky's Edge to the plague infested Canopy of Chasm City to the very maw of hell itself.
The plot was intriguing, the characters were interesting and if Chasm City wasn't fascinating enough on it's own we also get the back story of the first generation ships to leave the Solar System on a centuries long mission to colonize Journey's End or what would become more commonly known as Sky's Edge. We see this journey through the eyes of arguable the most intriguing character of the book, Sky Haussmann, Captain of the Santiego in a story that will see us encounter among other things, psychotic dolphins, cyborg terrorists, a ghost ship, betrayals and atrocity - and that's not even the best parts.
Like the first Revelation Space book, the first half of the book was build up with the second half ramping up the pace with twists and counter twists that will have your mouth hanging open - well mine was anyway.
This story was all sorts of cool, projecting a very goth vibe with the long high collared trench coats and big guns blazing from the hips.
Alistair Reynolds has me on the hook.
4 stars
Edit
There are some books that I enjoy reading at the time, but over time fade into Meh. And then there are those books I enjoy while reading them and then, over time, stay with me, ageing and maturing like a fine wine. Chasm City is definitely the latter. Like the melding plague, it has grown a life of its own in my memory to insinuate an extra star in this review. It is my favourite book in the series and so earns its place on my favourites shelf.
5 stars
May 11, 2020
“victory loses its meaning without the memory of what you've vanquished.”
what starts as a simple revenge story in a cyberpunk dystopia turns out to be much more complex as several characters’ lives, both past and present, interlock and slowly reveal the Real Truth of the matter.
we initially follow two storylines: one with our first-person protagonist tanner mirabel, a gruff security operative and weapons expert, who’s looking to kill the guy who murdered his previous clients. the second storyline is in the past, following sky haussmann, a crewmember on a colonizer ship who helped establish the world that mirabel is running around in.
i’ll be honest: reading this book was not a pleasant experience for me.
i can understand why it’s rated highly, because it eventually presents a compelling mystery with interesting reveals that get a great set-up throughout the story. there’s hints scattered throughout the various storylines, and the ending is pretty much all the threads of a tapestry suddenly converging to show you the full, mind boggling picture.
the last 150 pages are a banger, but that doesn’t excuse the previous 550 pages being an absolute chore to plod through. the prose is unimaginative, the plot is drab and slow, and the dialogue feels like it was written by someone with only a vague concept of how people communicate.
the worst offenders, however, were the characters. if they can even be called such, rather than plot placeholders or cardboard cutouts.
let’s start with our protagonist, tanner mirabel. the man is a walking, talking cringefest. the book being written in first person makes this even worse, where i had to suffer through mirabel telling me he can Shoot Real Good From The Hip, Knows Much Combat, and how he “has a blandly handsome face”, like the one of a “moderately successful actor”.
i find it hilarious that everyone always makes fun of teenage YA protagonists who are so very fond of telling the reader how handsome and talented they all are, right there at the peak of wish fulfillment. and yet somehow no one is mentioning how often this trope pops up in Classic Sci-Fi™ for middle-aged, gruff men and frankly, it’s embarrassing.
and mirabel never feels like he’s part of the impressive world that alastair reynolds sketches: a wonkily colonized galaxy, where a plague threatens all the complex nanobot-like tech that humans use to enhance themselves and enforce immortality. on one hand, mirabel knows all about implants, and on the other, he’s out there asking the Sexy Zebra Woman who is obviously augmented and saved his ass, “excuse me if it’s rude to ask, but did you always look like this?”
mirabel, my man, you are on a planet where people have their brains transplanted into animals, limbs can be regrown (including your own!), the richest immortal folks do the weirdest shit to their bodies, and you ask a striped woman if she always looked like this? when YOU are the one who infodumped me about all these practices?
goodbye, immersion. also, yes, you did just see me mention a Sexy Zebra Woman. that was no hallucination.
which brings me to my next point: to say that there are no complex, competent women in this story would be doing a disservice to all the male characters who also lack all complexity, but this story does employ a few utterly annoying sexist tropes. which is a little weird in a society where people can apparently easily swap body parts and/or flip gender identities.
anyway.
the storyline in the past, revolving around sky haussmann, was often what kept me reading. his struggle from a murky childhood to dangerous adulthood is compelling to watch, and his story has enjoyable classic sci-fi elements: space travel, politics, and aliens.
but even sky goes downhill eventually -- luckily at the same time when the reveals start dropping in mirabel’s storyline, so i could get my kicks out of that at least.
in the end, i could ramble on about this book’s faults for ages, but how much you enjoy this book will probably depend on how much you will appreciate the last fifth of the book, and how you interpret the true themes and mirabel’s journey as a character. i thought the execution of the mystery was amazing, just like the world this took place in. so if that’s your thing, i get it.
but the eventual thematic message ended up lacking an impact for me; it felt hollow thanks to inconsistencies and/or lack of depth in character progression and growth.
plus, i’m much more of a journey-person than a destination-person, and to spend 500+ pages rolling my eyes at cringey dialogue and badly motivated characters was far too much trouble for a semi-slick 150 page payoff.
✎ 2.0 stars.
April 6, 2017
The book Chasm City is the sequel to "REVELATION SPACE" and is a bit better than the first.
February 15, 2023
I read this because Alistair Reynolds is my teenager's favourite author. Although it is sometimes labelled as Revelation Space book 2, they reckoned this was the best book and has the advantage of being readable as a standalone story.
Although you could summarise it as a long chase story of hunter and hunted, it is a complex and well-written page turner (and there are quite a lot of pages), the main theme of which is the nature of identity and the effects of various ways of changing it (e.g. body mods, memory implants, nanotech, DNA manipulation, immortality, reefersleep to travel through time and space).
There are three main stories, set in different times and places and it swaps between them without ever being confusing. The main one concerns Tanner Mirabel's attempt to track down and kill Argent Reivich for revenge. This involves leaving his home planet of Sky's Edge and travelling to Chasm City on Yellowstone, once rich and technologically advanced, but now devastated by a nanotech virus. The gap between the poor who live in the Mulch and the rich in the Canopy is extreme and the idle rich liven their lives in dangerous ways. Previously, Mirabel was an ex soldier, hired as private security/bodyguard for Cahuella, a rich arms dealer with many enemies. Cahuella, and one hunting expedition in particular, is the second thread. The third strand follows Sky Haussman and is set a couple of hundred years earlier. Sky grows up as crew on one of a flotilla of space ships sent to colonise a new world. There are rivalries within and between ships, including deaths. Obviously as the book progresses, the links between these different stories gradually emerge.
The science is plausible and invariably explained as a natural part of the story, though occasionally he kept me waiting for the explanation rather longer than I wanted. Reynolds has a good feel for characters' inner thoughts and emotions (something that is not always true of sci fi) and manages to make each distinct without resorting to gimmicky dialects and non-standard spelling, although they somehow seem a little flat at the same time. He's also very good at helping the reader visualise all the strange worlds in glorious detail - at times I could "see" it as if I was watching a film.
There were a few sections that were a little clichéd, especially the ending, which felt a little rushed after nearly 600 leisurely pages, but overall, I thought it was a very good read.
Although you could summarise it as a long chase story of hunter and hunted, it is a complex and well-written page turner (and there are quite a lot of pages), the main theme of which is the nature of identity and the effects of various ways of changing it (e.g. body mods, memory implants, nanotech, DNA manipulation, immortality, reefersleep to travel through time and space).
There are three main stories, set in different times and places and it swaps between them without ever being confusing. The main one concerns Tanner Mirabel's attempt to track down and kill Argent Reivich for revenge. This involves leaving his home planet of Sky's Edge and travelling to Chasm City on Yellowstone, once rich and technologically advanced, but now devastated by a nanotech virus. The gap between the poor who live in the Mulch and the rich in the Canopy is extreme and the idle rich liven their lives in dangerous ways. Previously, Mirabel was an ex soldier, hired as private security/bodyguard for Cahuella, a rich arms dealer with many enemies. Cahuella, and one hunting expedition in particular, is the second thread. The third strand follows Sky Haussman and is set a couple of hundred years earlier. Sky grows up as crew on one of a flotilla of space ships sent to colonise a new world. There are rivalries within and between ships, including deaths. Obviously as the book progresses, the links between these different stories gradually emerge.
The science is plausible and invariably explained as a natural part of the story, though occasionally he kept me waiting for the explanation rather longer than I wanted. Reynolds has a good feel for characters' inner thoughts and emotions (something that is not always true of sci fi) and manages to make each distinct without resorting to gimmicky dialects and non-standard spelling, although they somehow seem a little flat at the same time. He's also very good at helping the reader visualise all the strange worlds in glorious detail - at times I could "see" it as if I was watching a film.
There were a few sections that were a little clichéd, especially the ending, which felt a little rushed after nearly 600 leisurely pages, but overall, I thought it was a very good read.
August 2, 2022
I tried reading Reynolds as a teen and HATED it. It left me cold and miserable. Now in my thirties I'm finding everything I've been looking for in space opera! Finally!
This was a damn good book. Interesting characters (with ridiculous layers of hidden personalities and memories that only get triggered at certain times and and and). Wonderful tech, and civilisations falling from the grace given them by their tech when the Melding Plague takes over everything above a certain complexity.
Decent action scenes, with super high-tech gorgeous lithe hunters and grimy genetically modified pigs that will eat you.
And the back-story... omg... Sky Houseman and the generations of crew taking care of sleeping human colonists on their way to our first extra-solar system colonisation. Sigh, I WANT MORE! And luckily there are many!
2022 Reread Update:
My review still stands. I have to admit the ending fell apart a little for me. It was a little too neatly parcelled up. But all in all a great story.
This was a damn good book. Interesting characters (with ridiculous layers of hidden personalities and memories that only get triggered at certain times and and and). Wonderful tech, and civilisations falling from the grace given them by their tech when the Melding Plague takes over everything above a certain complexity.
Decent action scenes, with super high-tech gorgeous lithe hunters and grimy genetically modified pigs that will eat you.
And the back-story... omg... Sky Houseman and the generations of crew taking care of sleeping human colonists on their way to our first extra-solar system colonisation. Sigh, I WANT MORE! And luckily there are many!
2022 Reread Update:
My review still stands. I have to admit the ending fell apart a little for me. It was a little too neatly parcelled up. But all in all a great story.
November 25, 2016
Chasm City: Gothic cyberpunk at its dark best
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Chasm City (2001) is the fourth Alastair Reynolds book I’ve read in his REVELATION SPACE series, though it is a stand-alone and a much better book. The main trilogy (Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap) featured a lot of good hard SF world-building, but was heavily weighed down by clunky characters, dialogue, and extremely bloated page-count. While Chasm City is not any shorter at around 700 pages, it makes much better use of those pages with a fast-paced plot, complicated and dark but intriguing characters, and flashbacks that form a gripping story of their own.
The main elements that distinguish Chasm City from many other space opera and cyberpunk offerings is its unique “gothic cyberpunk” feel. This comes primarily from the Melding Plague that has attacked the Glitter Band of 10,000 space orbitals that inhabit the Epsilon Eridani system. This civilization, though we never see it much, brings to mind the decadent future milieu of Iain M. Banks’ CULTURE novels. The Melding Plague is a nano-tech plague that attacks advanced technology and morphs it into a bizarre and degenerate conflation of organic and mechanical life.
As a result, the quasi-utopian civilization of the Glitter Band has been reduced to a Rust Belt of decimated orbitals taken over by ruined buildings, machinery, and habitats that have taken on strange and gothic shapes that continually change on their own volition, a seething organic-mechanical landscape that has reduced the high-tech world of Yellowstone and its capital city of Chasm City to a post-cyberpunk melange of low-tech, twisted and crumbling buildings, feral tribes of bottom-dwelling humans that occupy the Mulch, and more powerful elites that live in the Canopy above and occasionally hunt the unfortunates of the Mulch for entertainment.
The environment of Yellowstone strongly recalls the decaying post-apocalyptic worlds of J.G. Ballard’s The Crystal World and The Drowned World, along with elements of the dying earth riot of plant-life profusion of Brian Aldiss’ Hothouse. Everywhere we see signs of decay and collapse, as the machinery that mankind has painstakingly developed over centuries rebels against humans and taken on a life of its own. The use of low-tech also resembles the post-fossil fuel future society of Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl.
This is blended with a very dark cyberpunk tale of revenge centered on Tanner Mirabell, a former military operative who leaves Sky’s Edge to pursue a man named Reivich who killed the woman he loved but who was also his former boss wife. It’s a complex web of intrigue and hard-boiled revenge, much in the vein of Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, and like many of Reynolds’ characters, there is not much to like about these people, who are mostly cold, obsessive, and ruthless. This whole sub-genre was pioneered by William Gibson in Neuromancer, but Reynolds has put a new spin by subjecting his cyberpunk world to the corroding influence of the Melding Plague. It’s definitely a subversive and enticing concept.
Chasm City also has a fully-developed sub-plot that involves Sky Haussmann, a man who is a member of a fleet of generational starships that is heading to colonize a new world. He begins as an ambitious but sympathetic young man, but through various events he starts to make decisions that take him to the dark side, as he morphs into a power-hungry individual who seeks to take over the starships and destroy his rivals. This could have been done simply through flashbacks, but Reynolds again does something different. He introduces his Sky episodes via flashbacks by Tanner Mirabell, who has been infected with an “indoctrination virus” that causes him to recall memories of Sky Haussmann as if they were his own. This virus seems to have been created by a cult that worships the vilified Sky, who was crucified for the crimes he committed centuries earlier.
Reynolds deftly interweaves the memories of Sky Housemann with the slowly returning memories of Tanner Mirabell. As we learn more about both characters, we also begin to realize that both Tanner’s story, Sky’s crimes, the generational starship mission, and the Melding Plague itself are linked in far more byzantine ways than we initially thought. As if that weren’t enough, Reynolds introduces a series of plot twists in the final third of the book that force us to rethink what has come before. I’m not sure if all the plot elements and motivations really make sense, but I loved the dark stew of narratives that bring into question every aspect of Tanner’s identity and memories. It’s definitely worth untangling again in a future reading, and I’m so glad that Chasm City showed me what has appealed to his large fan base, since I was not convinced by the REVELATION SPACE trilogy.
John Lee as always does a solid job on the narration — he is well suited to the dark tone of the book and has chemistry with Reynolds ' work. I’ll be moving on to the The Prefect and House of Suns next with a much more positive outlook.
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Chasm City (2001) is the fourth Alastair Reynolds book I’ve read in his REVELATION SPACE series, though it is a stand-alone and a much better book. The main trilogy (Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap) featured a lot of good hard SF world-building, but was heavily weighed down by clunky characters, dialogue, and extremely bloated page-count. While Chasm City is not any shorter at around 700 pages, it makes much better use of those pages with a fast-paced plot, complicated and dark but intriguing characters, and flashbacks that form a gripping story of their own.
The main elements that distinguish Chasm City from many other space opera and cyberpunk offerings is its unique “gothic cyberpunk” feel. This comes primarily from the Melding Plague that has attacked the Glitter Band of 10,000 space orbitals that inhabit the Epsilon Eridani system. This civilization, though we never see it much, brings to mind the decadent future milieu of Iain M. Banks’ CULTURE novels. The Melding Plague is a nano-tech plague that attacks advanced technology and morphs it into a bizarre and degenerate conflation of organic and mechanical life.
As a result, the quasi-utopian civilization of the Glitter Band has been reduced to a Rust Belt of decimated orbitals taken over by ruined buildings, machinery, and habitats that have taken on strange and gothic shapes that continually change on their own volition, a seething organic-mechanical landscape that has reduced the high-tech world of Yellowstone and its capital city of Chasm City to a post-cyberpunk melange of low-tech, twisted and crumbling buildings, feral tribes of bottom-dwelling humans that occupy the Mulch, and more powerful elites that live in the Canopy above and occasionally hunt the unfortunates of the Mulch for entertainment.
The environment of Yellowstone strongly recalls the decaying post-apocalyptic worlds of J.G. Ballard’s The Crystal World and The Drowned World, along with elements of the dying earth riot of plant-life profusion of Brian Aldiss’ Hothouse. Everywhere we see signs of decay and collapse, as the machinery that mankind has painstakingly developed over centuries rebels against humans and taken on a life of its own. The use of low-tech also resembles the post-fossil fuel future society of Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl.
This is blended with a very dark cyberpunk tale of revenge centered on Tanner Mirabell, a former military operative who leaves Sky’s Edge to pursue a man named Reivich who killed the woman he loved but who was also his former boss wife. It’s a complex web of intrigue and hard-boiled revenge, much in the vein of Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, and like many of Reynolds’ characters, there is not much to like about these people, who are mostly cold, obsessive, and ruthless. This whole sub-genre was pioneered by William Gibson in Neuromancer, but Reynolds has put a new spin by subjecting his cyberpunk world to the corroding influence of the Melding Plague. It’s definitely a subversive and enticing concept.
Chasm City also has a fully-developed sub-plot that involves Sky Haussmann, a man who is a member of a fleet of generational starships that is heading to colonize a new world. He begins as an ambitious but sympathetic young man, but through various events he starts to make decisions that take him to the dark side, as he morphs into a power-hungry individual who seeks to take over the starships and destroy his rivals. This could have been done simply through flashbacks, but Reynolds again does something different. He introduces his Sky episodes via flashbacks by Tanner Mirabell, who has been infected with an “indoctrination virus” that causes him to recall memories of Sky Haussmann as if they were his own. This virus seems to have been created by a cult that worships the vilified Sky, who was crucified for the crimes he committed centuries earlier.
Reynolds deftly interweaves the memories of Sky Housemann with the slowly returning memories of Tanner Mirabell. As we learn more about both characters, we also begin to realize that both Tanner’s story, Sky’s crimes, the generational starship mission, and the Melding Plague itself are linked in far more byzantine ways than we initially thought. As if that weren’t enough, Reynolds introduces a series of plot twists in the final third of the book that force us to rethink what has come before. I’m not sure if all the plot elements and motivations really make sense, but I loved the dark stew of narratives that bring into question every aspect of Tanner’s identity and memories. It’s definitely worth untangling again in a future reading, and I’m so glad that Chasm City showed me what has appealed to his large fan base, since I was not convinced by the REVELATION SPACE trilogy.
John Lee as always does a solid job on the narration — he is well suited to the dark tone of the book and has chemistry with Reynolds ' work. I’ll be moving on to the The Prefect and House of Suns next with a much more positive outlook.
September 18, 2016
Reasons not to listen to this audiobook while assembling cabinets:
1. That moment when a big reveal happens and you say "HOLY SHIT!!!!" tends to make people panic.
2. You have to take the cabinet apart and reassemble it. Twice.
This was absolutely amazing! The main character, Tanner, is an assassin who is on the trail of a man that he intends to kill for revenge. Throughout the book Tanner is also flashing back on this crucified martyr named Sky. Through this we get to see who Sky was and how the colony of Sky's Edge was made.
Tanner tracks his desired target to Chasm City where a plague occurred seven years prior to the opening of the book. Known as The Melding Plague, it damages the implants in a person's mind and causes the immortal to become mortal. What's left is a city of great depravity where people who have lived for centuries do insane and/or immoral things just to feel alive for a moment.
This has a very brief crossover with Revelation Space, which I actually read first. I don't think I have a preference for which one I should have read first. I really must get my hands on the next one. The rest of the series, actually. Immediately. And possibly everything else the author has read.
1. That moment when a big reveal happens and you say "HOLY SHIT!!!!" tends to make people panic.
2. You have to take the cabinet apart and reassemble it. Twice.
This was absolutely amazing! The main character, Tanner, is an assassin who is on the trail of a man that he intends to kill for revenge. Throughout the book Tanner is also flashing back on this crucified martyr named Sky. Through this we get to see who Sky was and how the colony of Sky's Edge was made.
Tanner tracks his desired target to Chasm City where a plague occurred seven years prior to the opening of the book. Known as The Melding Plague, it damages the implants in a person's mind and causes the immortal to become mortal. What's left is a city of great depravity where people who have lived for centuries do insane and/or immoral things just to feel alive for a moment.
This has a very brief crossover with Revelation Space, which I actually read first. I don't think I have a preference for which one I should have read first. I really must get my hands on the next one. The rest of the series, actually. Immediately. And possibly everything else the author has read.
April 6, 2013
We all have triggers, certain topics in our beloved genres that instantly make us sit up and pay attention. Artificial intelligence is one such trigger for me; identity is another. (Both touch on philosophy of the mind, a field that fascinates me, and I suspect this is why they intrigue me.) There is scant AI in Chasm City, but there is plenty of reflection on identity and the ramifications of using technology to alter one’s identity. As every other review notes, this book is part of the Revelation Space universe but stands alone; one does not need to read any of the other novels to enjoy it.
I often spend most of a review discussing the main character and my reaction to them. In this case, I suppose that would be Tanner Mirabel—but it’s more complicated than that. Tanner has left the backwater world of Sky’s Edge in pursuit of Argent Reivich, a cold-hearted killer. Tanner wants revenge after failing to protect his employer’s wife from Reivich. Since humanity hasn’t discovered superluminal travel in this universe, Tanner’s only option for following Reivich to the burgeoning Yellowstone is reefersleep—stasis aboard a relativistic-speed ship. When he awakes, he has the characteristic amnesia of someone who has spent time in reefersleep. Gradually, Tanner’s memories click back into place—but it’s more complicated than that.
Along with his own memories, Tanner begins having intense, realistic dreams that remember parts of the life of Sky Haussmann, the vilified founder of Sky’s Edge. Hundreds of years ago, Sky took command of one of the four generation ships en route to Sky’s Edge—then, Journey’s End. In a calculated move to reach the planet before any of the other ships, Sky jettisoned all of the sleeping passengers. Long dead (crucified, in fact), Sky’s memories somehow survive in a kind of virus that a cult passes on to travellers. Infected, Tanner spends the entire book reliving parts of Sky’s life in chronological order.
Chasm City is a long book. So by breaking it up with these episodes—as well as similar flashbacks to Tanner’s time with his employer and his employer’s wife—Reynolds makes the pacing more bearable. Tanner’s actual hunt for Reivich always seems to meet obstacles and get him side-tracked in true action-movie fashion. He gets thrust into a “Most Dangerous Game” hunt (as the quarry), then he gets rescued, betrays his rescuer, goes on a fact-finding mission, hooks up with his rescuer again, etc. The plot doesn’t follow a straight line or even some kind of zig-zag path towards finding Reivich; it seems more like a kind of drunken, slightly off-kilter spiral towards the final confrontation. Of course, by that point the true nature of Tanner’s complicated identity issues has been revealed, changing everything.
Seriously, I seldom see such masterful sleight-of-hand. Reynolds pulls off a reveal both complicated and potentially corny enough that it could have ruined the entire book. As it is, it deepened my enjoyment of Chasm City immensely. Suddenly this was no longer a simple tale about a super-soldier assassin on a quest for revenge. Instead, it was about a conflicted and very broken man slowly rediscovering his identity and realizing how little he understands about himself.
Reynolds touches on several of the typical reactions to the manipulation of memory—how, thanks to that manipulation, Tanner is no longer the man he was or the man he is pretending to be but actually a new person altogether. It raises all sorts of questions about the implications that memory-scanning and -altering technology has for individuality and personhood. Am I me, or a copy of me—an instance of me running on a particular platform? If I tweak my memories, do I destroy who I am? We see this latter phenomenon in people who suffer from diseases like Alzheimer’s—but what if we willingly added or subtracted memories rather than lost them indiscriminately and uncontrollably? Would it be any different?
More than raising (and offering some answers to) these questions, Reynolds provides an action-packed story in the process. I came to quite enjoy the Sky flashbacks. Sky’s story develops in parallel to Tanner’s, with its own arc, conflict, motivations, etc. There are links that tie the two narratives together, with more hints at the underlying mythology of the Revelation Space universe. And the sinister transformation of Sky from somewhat innocent child to an outright anti-hero is fascinating in a cold way. Having recently finished another novel about a generation ship, I was struck by certain similarities (though I much prefer how Reynolds handled it).
It’s a good thing that the main character (or characters, I guess, since Sky’s story is almost a novella in its own right) is so multi-dimensional and complex. Chasm City lacks many compelling minor characters. The likes of Quirrenbach, Zebra, Chantarelle, etc., are more distractions than anything—interesting and memorable names, to be sure, they seem to surface and then evaporate to fit the needs of the plot. Perhaps one of the reasons I enjoyed Sky’s narrative so much was the relative straightforwardness of the plot compared to the digressions that dominate Tanner’s. Whatever the case, there are certainly issues here with characterization; I can ignore them, though, because the rest of the book is just so good.
Somewhat different from Revelation Space—and that’s probably a good thing—Chasm City delivers an interesting mix of mystery, thriller, and philosophy. It is definitely a shining example of what good science fiction can be, proof that one can engage with meaningful issues without sacrificing story. Definitely something you want on your to-read list.
My reviews of the Revelation Space series:
← Revelation Space | Redemption Ark →
I often spend most of a review discussing the main character and my reaction to them. In this case, I suppose that would be Tanner Mirabel—but it’s more complicated than that. Tanner has left the backwater world of Sky’s Edge in pursuit of Argent Reivich, a cold-hearted killer. Tanner wants revenge after failing to protect his employer’s wife from Reivich. Since humanity hasn’t discovered superluminal travel in this universe, Tanner’s only option for following Reivich to the burgeoning Yellowstone is reefersleep—stasis aboard a relativistic-speed ship. When he awakes, he has the characteristic amnesia of someone who has spent time in reefersleep. Gradually, Tanner’s memories click back into place—but it’s more complicated than that.
Along with his own memories, Tanner begins having intense, realistic dreams that remember parts of the life of Sky Haussmann, the vilified founder of Sky’s Edge. Hundreds of years ago, Sky took command of one of the four generation ships en route to Sky’s Edge—then, Journey’s End. In a calculated move to reach the planet before any of the other ships, Sky jettisoned all of the sleeping passengers. Long dead (crucified, in fact), Sky’s memories somehow survive in a kind of virus that a cult passes on to travellers. Infected, Tanner spends the entire book reliving parts of Sky’s life in chronological order.
Chasm City is a long book. So by breaking it up with these episodes—as well as similar flashbacks to Tanner’s time with his employer and his employer’s wife—Reynolds makes the pacing more bearable. Tanner’s actual hunt for Reivich always seems to meet obstacles and get him side-tracked in true action-movie fashion. He gets thrust into a “Most Dangerous Game” hunt (as the quarry), then he gets rescued, betrays his rescuer, goes on a fact-finding mission, hooks up with his rescuer again, etc. The plot doesn’t follow a straight line or even some kind of zig-zag path towards finding Reivich; it seems more like a kind of drunken, slightly off-kilter spiral towards the final confrontation. Of course, by that point the true nature of Tanner’s complicated identity issues has been revealed, changing everything.
Seriously, I seldom see such masterful sleight-of-hand. Reynolds pulls off a reveal both complicated and potentially corny enough that it could have ruined the entire book. As it is, it deepened my enjoyment of Chasm City immensely. Suddenly this was no longer a simple tale about a super-soldier assassin on a quest for revenge. Instead, it was about a conflicted and very broken man slowly rediscovering his identity and realizing how little he understands about himself.
Reynolds touches on several of the typical reactions to the manipulation of memory—how, thanks to that manipulation, Tanner is no longer the man he was or the man he is pretending to be but actually a new person altogether. It raises all sorts of questions about the implications that memory-scanning and -altering technology has for individuality and personhood. Am I me, or a copy of me—an instance of me running on a particular platform? If I tweak my memories, do I destroy who I am? We see this latter phenomenon in people who suffer from diseases like Alzheimer’s—but what if we willingly added or subtracted memories rather than lost them indiscriminately and uncontrollably? Would it be any different?
More than raising (and offering some answers to) these questions, Reynolds provides an action-packed story in the process. I came to quite enjoy the Sky flashbacks. Sky’s story develops in parallel to Tanner’s, with its own arc, conflict, motivations, etc. There are links that tie the two narratives together, with more hints at the underlying mythology of the Revelation Space universe. And the sinister transformation of Sky from somewhat innocent child to an outright anti-hero is fascinating in a cold way. Having recently finished another novel about a generation ship, I was struck by certain similarities (though I much prefer how Reynolds handled it).
It’s a good thing that the main character (or characters, I guess, since Sky’s story is almost a novella in its own right) is so multi-dimensional and complex. Chasm City lacks many compelling minor characters. The likes of Quirrenbach, Zebra, Chantarelle, etc., are more distractions than anything—interesting and memorable names, to be sure, they seem to surface and then evaporate to fit the needs of the plot. Perhaps one of the reasons I enjoyed Sky’s narrative so much was the relative straightforwardness of the plot compared to the digressions that dominate Tanner’s. Whatever the case, there are certainly issues here with characterization; I can ignore them, though, because the rest of the book is just so good.
Somewhat different from Revelation Space—and that’s probably a good thing—Chasm City delivers an interesting mix of mystery, thriller, and philosophy. It is definitely a shining example of what good science fiction can be, proof that one can engage with meaningful issues without sacrificing story. Definitely something you want on your to-read list.
My reviews of the Revelation Space series:
← Revelation Space | Redemption Ark →
September 28, 2025
Chasm City
by Alastair Reynolds
This has the feel of sci-fi books from the 1980s, and I love that. Characters are interesting, the story has a unique plot, and lots of action. For a prequel, it was sure long! Over 600 pages! I had read book 1 in the series before and I may end up reading it again to see if reading this book will make book 2 easier to understand.
by Alastair Reynolds
This has the feel of sci-fi books from the 1980s, and I love that. Characters are interesting, the story has a unique plot, and lots of action. For a prequel, it was sure long! Over 600 pages! I had read book 1 in the series before and I may end up reading it again to see if reading this book will make book 2 easier to understand.
December 24, 2024
These are this book's superlatives:
*Most mind-numbingly boring book I've read in 2024.
*Worst book that has a character named Gideon (by far).
I would only loosely call this a book. It definitely has a plot (of sorts) and an interesting world to play in. What it's lacking in is characters that have any sort of inner life, interesting conflicts, emotional stakes, physical stakes, etc. The main 'character' is like a more robotic, flegmatic, unflappable version of James Bond. But in Space!!! Literally allllll of the Bond tropes are in here and some noir tropes to boot. It never feels like he is in danger, distraught, or has any sort of emotion (beyond arousal for fetishized and exoticized women).
He is the kind of guy who will call sex 'making love', even though there's no love there. He is the kind of guy who will look at a woman and first describe her as 'beautiful and exotic'. And it's not just the character that's sexist, the book is too, because the women are put in... situations. Take this woman named Zebra. Look, ofc she is called that because her body is covered in zebra stripes. She would have no imagination for another name. She is the type of woman who would appear in a translucent outfit that would somehow have her genitals in shadow. We get that in how the first person narration is describing her.
And before someone jumps in and says: oh, the male characters are as flat as the women characters, I will jump in and say: it's not the same thing. The male character is flat so that male readers would project themselves on him. The female characters are flat because they're mere objects to ogle or drool over.
That's it, I've spent enough of my brief existence on this Earth reading and 'thinking' about this book.
*Most mind-numbingly boring book I've read in 2024.
*Worst book that has a character named Gideon (by far).
I would only loosely call this a book. It definitely has a plot (of sorts) and an interesting world to play in. What it's lacking in is characters that have any sort of inner life, interesting conflicts, emotional stakes, physical stakes, etc. The main 'character' is like a more robotic, flegmatic, unflappable version of James Bond. But in Space!!! Literally allllll of the Bond tropes are in here and some noir tropes to boot. It never feels like he is in danger, distraught, or has any sort of emotion (beyond arousal for fetishized and exoticized women).
He is the kind of guy who will call sex 'making love', even though there's no love there. He is the kind of guy who will look at a woman and first describe her as 'beautiful and exotic'. And it's not just the character that's sexist, the book is too, because the women are put in... situations. Take this woman named Zebra. Look, ofc she is called that because her body is covered in zebra stripes. She would have no imagination for another name. She is the type of woman who would appear in a translucent outfit that would somehow have her genitals in shadow. We get that in how the first person narration is describing her.
And before someone jumps in and says: oh, the male characters are as flat as the women characters, I will jump in and say: it's not the same thing. The male character is flat so that male readers would project themselves on him. The female characters are flat because they're mere objects to ogle or drool over.
That's it, I've spent enough of my brief existence on this Earth reading and 'thinking' about this book.
September 2, 2012
The family's godfather sat back in his plush leather recliner and calmly ordered the hit, like the man who was about to be murdered was nothing more than a bug to be squashed …
The crack sniper squinted through his gun's sight, aligning the target's forehead in the crosshairs, and pulled the trigger with no second thoughts or remorse …
The muck and grime of the city's underworld didn't alarm him at all, as he trudged through the rain-flooded streets in search of his prey …
Come one, come all, see the bazaar! Eat the spiced meat! Meet the best doctor in the slum, he only kills one in twenty! …
He loved her, loved her deeply; she was the most precious thing in his universe, the only one who knew what he was capable of and yet loved him anyway …
The generational colony ship slid along its preset course to Journey's End, surrounded only by the absolute silence and darkness of deep interstellar space …
There is a ghost ship following us …
There is a ghost following us …
It was a dark and stormy night …
I am what is known as an unreliable narrator …
History is written by the victors …
-----------------------------------------------
Several of my GR friends have read Chasm City and had mixed reactions ranging from "it sucks" to "it's just okay." Well they're wrong. I think they couldn't handle Chasm City (… you can't HANDLE the truth!!! …). It's darkness, it's depth, it's muck overwhelmed them. This book is dirty good.
I've now read all of Alastair Reynolds' books set in his Revelation Space universe. I began with The Prefect and, as I said in my review, it was not snazzy book but it was exceptionally well executed. Chasm City was both snazzy and well executed. Okay, maybe "snazzy" isn't the right word … "oozy" is probably better. I know it sounds gross, and I suppose that's partially the meaning I intend to convey, but I also mean that Chasm City oozes darkness and human desperation, and I further mean that the setting—Chasm City itself—oozes around you while your read, displacing your warm and comfortable wealthy Western surroundings. For in Chasm City, Reynolds has given us a dripping wet, sticky, seedy, smelly shithole of a place to set a story … a city covered in a layer of literal and figurative slime … a city which has no laws except the law of the strong and the weak, the law of the very rich and the very poor… a city inhabited by buildings that have reshaped themselves according to their own arcane will … and the buildings inhabited by people that scrape the bottom of the barrel of human experience and are grateful for the handful of filth they find. In Chasm City, Reynolds dives headfirst into the sci-fi noir experience … and drags us with him.
And what makes Chasm City (the book) so excellent is that the sci-fi noir experience doesn't end at the rim of Chasm City (the city). The book takes us on an interstellar voyage aboard a generational ship under the grip of petty personal power struggles and paranoid conspiracy theories, both real and imagined, the crew making bargains with the devil amidst the literal darkness outside and the figurative darkness inside. The book takes us on a hunt on the planet Sky's Edge, where society has been torn apart by a centuries-long war with no end in sight, where—unless you are very wealthy—your life is sure to feel the unpleasant impact of the war's constant hammering.
Chasm City is a book of deliberate hyperbole in which Reynolds showcases some of the worst of what humanity has to offer, filled with extreme examples and nasty caricatures that rise to the level of wry satire and sardonic cheese. Normally that sort of thing doesn't sit well with me but it works much better in a dark context than in a humorous or other lighter context. In Chasm City Reynolds seems to be paying homage to cheesy who-dun-its, plot-twisty detective novels and overwrought crime thrillers. In this respect Chasm City doesn't seem to take itself too seriously, an important element of getting the reader to accept what Reynolds is doing.
Reynolds uses some inventive methods, or at least clever twists on older methods, for revealing both the characters' pasts and the history of the worlds in which the story is set. A character recovering from amnesia certainly is a tried and true method of revealing someone's past, but Reynolds manages to make the amnesia fit into the story in a logical way; the amnesia doesn't come across as a contrived excuse. The more inventive method Reynolds uses is an "indoctrinal virus"—which is pretty much what it sounds like. One of the main characters contracts this virus, which implants the memories of a revered historical figure, thereby revealing key historical facts.
Chasm City is creative and it's in your face. Chasm City is dark and dirty. Chasm City is juicy and chewy and it burns your throat on the way down. Chasm City is … Chasm City.
The crack sniper squinted through his gun's sight, aligning the target's forehead in the crosshairs, and pulled the trigger with no second thoughts or remorse …
The muck and grime of the city's underworld didn't alarm him at all, as he trudged through the rain-flooded streets in search of his prey …
Come one, come all, see the bazaar! Eat the spiced meat! Meet the best doctor in the slum, he only kills one in twenty! …
He loved her, loved her deeply; she was the most precious thing in his universe, the only one who knew what he was capable of and yet loved him anyway …
The generational colony ship slid along its preset course to Journey's End, surrounded only by the absolute silence and darkness of deep interstellar space …
There is a ghost ship following us …
There is a ghost following us …
It was a dark and stormy night …
I am what is known as an unreliable narrator …
History is written by the victors …
-----------------------------------------------
Several of my GR friends have read Chasm City and had mixed reactions ranging from "it sucks" to "it's just okay." Well they're wrong. I think they couldn't handle Chasm City (… you can't HANDLE the truth!!! …). It's darkness, it's depth, it's muck overwhelmed them. This book is dirty good.
I've now read all of Alastair Reynolds' books set in his Revelation Space universe. I began with The Prefect and, as I said in my review, it was not snazzy book but it was exceptionally well executed. Chasm City was both snazzy and well executed. Okay, maybe "snazzy" isn't the right word … "oozy" is probably better. I know it sounds gross, and I suppose that's partially the meaning I intend to convey, but I also mean that Chasm City oozes darkness and human desperation, and I further mean that the setting—Chasm City itself—oozes around you while your read, displacing your warm and comfortable wealthy Western surroundings. For in Chasm City, Reynolds has given us a dripping wet, sticky, seedy, smelly shithole of a place to set a story … a city covered in a layer of literal and figurative slime … a city which has no laws except the law of the strong and the weak, the law of the very rich and the very poor… a city inhabited by buildings that have reshaped themselves according to their own arcane will … and the buildings inhabited by people that scrape the bottom of the barrel of human experience and are grateful for the handful of filth they find. In Chasm City, Reynolds dives headfirst into the sci-fi noir experience … and drags us with him.
And what makes Chasm City (the book) so excellent is that the sci-fi noir experience doesn't end at the rim of Chasm City (the city). The book takes us on an interstellar voyage aboard a generational ship under the grip of petty personal power struggles and paranoid conspiracy theories, both real and imagined, the crew making bargains with the devil amidst the literal darkness outside and the figurative darkness inside. The book takes us on a hunt on the planet Sky's Edge, where society has been torn apart by a centuries-long war with no end in sight, where—unless you are very wealthy—your life is sure to feel the unpleasant impact of the war's constant hammering.
Chasm City is a book of deliberate hyperbole in which Reynolds showcases some of the worst of what humanity has to offer, filled with extreme examples and nasty caricatures that rise to the level of wry satire and sardonic cheese. Normally that sort of thing doesn't sit well with me but it works much better in a dark context than in a humorous or other lighter context. In Chasm City Reynolds seems to be paying homage to cheesy who-dun-its, plot-twisty detective novels and overwrought crime thrillers. In this respect Chasm City doesn't seem to take itself too seriously, an important element of getting the reader to accept what Reynolds is doing.
Reynolds uses some inventive methods, or at least clever twists on older methods, for revealing both the characters' pasts and the history of the worlds in which the story is set. A character recovering from amnesia certainly is a tried and true method of revealing someone's past, but Reynolds manages to make the amnesia fit into the story in a logical way; the amnesia doesn't come across as a contrived excuse. The more inventive method Reynolds uses is an "indoctrinal virus"—which is pretty much what it sounds like. One of the main characters contracts this virus, which implants the memories of a revered historical figure, thereby revealing key historical facts.
Chasm City is creative and it's in your face. Chasm City is dark and dirty. Chasm City is juicy and chewy and it burns your throat on the way down. Chasm City is … Chasm City.
January 26, 2014
There's something very important attached to modern, well-crafted space-opera. It's not precisely the way new and old tech drives the boundaries of plot, nor is it the very common feel of jaded semi-immortals gripping onto their lives in fascist drama. It's something hidden, an underlay of expectations that successfully build so much momentum that the text screams like a runaway train and it doesn't matter how much inane and crazy plot-twists crop up, because you're just left holding on to the ride.
Don't get me wrong, this novel wasn't particularly fast paced, but it did maintain a solid clip. I found myself somewhat rooting for the other trying to take over his mind long before the twists made it super plausible as well as inevitable. The only real issue I wanted to make was in the person he had originally began as, since there just wasn't enough presence or emotional immediacy, despite the whole reason for the multiple revenge scenarios. That persona was already lost by the time he knew it was lost, and so there wasn't any immediacy or consequence to it, and I thought that might have been a great opportunity to turn a good book into a good gut-wrenching book.
I thought it was quite fun, and I think I'll be recommending Mr. Reynolds widely.
Don't get me wrong, this novel wasn't particularly fast paced, but it did maintain a solid clip. I found myself somewhat rooting for the other trying to take over his mind long before the twists made it super plausible as well as inevitable. The only real issue I wanted to make was in the person he had originally began as, since there just wasn't enough presence or emotional immediacy, despite the whole reason for the multiple revenge scenarios. That persona was already lost by the time he knew it was lost, and so there wasn't any immediacy or consequence to it, and I thought that might have been a great opportunity to turn a good book into a good gut-wrenching book.
I thought it was quite fun, and I think I'll be recommending Mr. Reynolds widely.
August 10, 2025
The book started really clever with a travelogue brochure prologue explaining the events within this universe to get you up to speed while you sped to Chasm City. This being my first Reynolds, it helped bring me in to what happened previously. From there, it's a scifi noir that felt like Blade Runner meets Dirty Harry.
If you are a scifi fan, you will enjoy this book. There are a lot of big ideas and cool technology that stir the imagination. After a problem with technology, they've gone back to steam power--very cool. A cloud dwelling civilization has a crazy-cool mode of transportation. There's an unusual drug that ends up having a cool story. There's even a cool twist. Lots of cool. Bring a blanket.
I did think, however, that the quality of writing faltered at around the halfway point for some reason. Maybe Reynolds became fatigued by the length while editing. ... And after that halfway point, the pacing was scattered. I started remembering the teachers in my school days telling us we needed a Rising Action that culminated in the most exciting point of the story--the Climax. Well, the most exciting parts came earlier in Chasm City.
I had a lot of fun reading this one, but it is larger than what I'm used to reading. Perhaps I was just starting to lose focus. I would still, however, recommend jumping into this chasm for yourself.
If you are a scifi fan, you will enjoy this book. There are a lot of big ideas and cool technology that stir the imagination. After a problem with technology, they've gone back to steam power--very cool. A cloud dwelling civilization has a crazy-cool mode of transportation. There's an unusual drug that ends up having a cool story. There's even a cool twist. Lots of cool. Bring a blanket.
I did think, however, that the quality of writing faltered at around the halfway point for some reason. Maybe Reynolds became fatigued by the length while editing. ... And after that halfway point, the pacing was scattered. I started remembering the teachers in my school days telling us we needed a Rising Action that culminated in the most exciting point of the story--the Climax. Well, the most exciting parts came earlier in Chasm City.
I had a lot of fun reading this one, but it is larger than what I'm used to reading. Perhaps I was just starting to lose focus. I would still, however, recommend jumping into this chasm for yourself.
October 3, 2012
"How long would you have to live; how much good would you have to do, to compensate for one act of pure evil you'd committed as a younger man?"
Redemption. It seems to be one of Reynold's favorite themes. It was prevelant in the Revelation Space series, and it takes
center stage in Chasm City.
It's normal for Alastair's novels to push the 500 page mark, but unlike other works I've read in this genre, his stories
are lean and mean. This is the leanest and meanest story I've read of his. Although this novel clocks in at almost 700
pages, Reynolds does not waste time, and there is very little extreaneous material to be found here.
After I read the 3 Revelation Space books, this book sat on my shelf for 2 years because I feared that a Reynolds story
being confined to a single city would feel claustrophobic. I was really wrong. To my delight, we quickly find out that we
are going to be splitting time not only on Chasm City, but also on Sky's Edge, and on the generation ships sent to colonize
this world orbiting 61 Cygni.
Those parts were probably my favorite, because I absolutely love the sociological implications of being part of a flotilla of 6 ships travelling at sublight speed for 150 years, each ship basically an
independant island in and of itself, regardless (or in spite) of the fact that they are headed to the same destination.
Let's just say the results are not pretty, but to be expected when you consider our sometimes primitive nature.
Why is this flotilla's destination name changed from Journey's End to Sky's Edge? The answer is probably one of the coolest
parts of this novel; the stunning action that was committed for that name to stick decades after colonization is
at the very crux of why Sky Haussmann is in such desperate need for redemption.
Its a mind blowing thrill ride all the way through.
April 11, 2016
“How long would you have to live; how much good would you need to do, to compensate for one act of pure evil you’d committed as a younger man?”
The darkest in the Revelation universe so far, even horrifying one, with a brilliant crescendo in events and terrifying characters. I changed my feelings about the main one several times during reading, from pure hatred to pity and sympathy and now that I finished it, I have no idea whether I hate him or not.
“’Why would people want to experience something like that?’ I asked. He grinned at the youth.’ Hey, what is this, rocking philosophy hour? How am I supposed to know? This is human nature we’re talking about here; it’s already deeply fucking perverted.’”
Don’t expect too much action – it’s a one man quest into his mind, mostly. But what a quest…
It occurred to me at some point that Al Reynolds’ works are for sci-fi literature what is ballet for dance or opera for music: exquisite, high class performance. I had my share of sci-fi so far, but I can’t find anyone else to rise to this level of writing. Cannot recommend him enough.
February 7, 2017
Una gozada de libro. 4.5 estrellas pero redondeo hacia arriba.
Primero de todo, creo que recomiendo leer Ciudad Abismo antes que Espacio Revelación. En esta novela Reynolds sienta las bases del universo que crea de una manera más fácil de entender y mejor estructurada que en Espacio Revelación y te prepara para lo que viene después.
En cuanto a la historia, es un libro con tantos giros y cambios de punto de vista que se necesita tiempo y tranquilidad para su lectura. El autor entremezcla 3 y 4 hilos argumentales todos ellos imprescindibles para la compresión final de la historia y en cada uno de ellos tu empatía hacía los personajes van variando del amor al odio con cada nueva acción que realizan.
Pero lo mejor de todo es el sentido de la maravilla que tiene Alastair Reynolds, su forma de abarcar cientos de años en una misma historia y que todo cuadre.
La única pega que le pondría es que el autor peca de acompañar y ayudar al lector hasta el mismísimo final cuando simplemente con esbozar por dónde iban los tiros serviría.
Primero de todo, creo que recomiendo leer Ciudad Abismo antes que Espacio Revelación. En esta novela Reynolds sienta las bases del universo que crea de una manera más fácil de entender y mejor estructurada que en Espacio Revelación y te prepara para lo que viene después.
En cuanto a la historia, es un libro con tantos giros y cambios de punto de vista que se necesita tiempo y tranquilidad para su lectura. El autor entremezcla 3 y 4 hilos argumentales todos ellos imprescindibles para la compresión final de la historia y en cada uno de ellos tu empatía hacía los personajes van variando del amor al odio con cada nueva acción que realizan.
Pero lo mejor de todo es el sentido de la maravilla que tiene Alastair Reynolds, su forma de abarcar cientos de años en una misma historia y que todo cuadre.
La única pega que le pondría es que el autor peca de acompañar y ayudar al lector hasta el mismísimo final cuando simplemente con esbozar por dónde iban los tiros serviría.
August 15, 2016
Orașul abisului este un roman ce conține suficiente elemente din recuzita genului - știință, lumi exotice, conflicte intergalactice și violența aferentă. Lumea Orașului abisului este însă foarte bine dezvoltată și destul de coerentă, conținând detalii tehnice, dar și altele ce dau veridicitate (etnografie, mitologie, religie etc.). Din păcate, ca în multe cărți hard SF, personajele sunt deficitare, mai mult niște umbre ce populează mărețul spațiu imaginat. Pline de clișee, aceste umbre sunt mânate de colo-colo, fără ca acțiunile lor să fie motivate în vreun fel din punct de vedere psihologic. Carte este salvată însă de cele trei planuri narative foarte bine mânuite de autor - cel al acțiunii imediate, cel din vis și cel din flash-back-uri. De aceea, aproape nu mai contează că spre final, personajul principal se dovedește neinteresant, cu prea multe personalități scoase din pălăria autorului, dar cu prea puțină coerență din punct de vedere psihologic.
November 22, 2021
(Still going on: spoilers may include spoilers for other books for this ‘verse.)
I will start by saying: this is not a good book to start reading the ‘verse with; I feel like there are some weaknesses to this book that make it a 3.5 star read. The book did stay on my mind long after; the details within are strengths against any weaknesses. And when you’ve read “Absolution Gap”, you
I also think that you really do need to read “The Prefect”/”Aurora Rising” and “Elysium Fire” books first to understand the depth to which Chasm City, on planet Yellowstone, and the Glitter Band, now the Rust Band, have decline from their glory days, and thus feel a bit more sorry for their current state, after the Melding Plague’s trail of destruction (and we do find out the source for it during the story) that started seven years before this book’s story.
But here’s the plot: Tanner Mirabel, a former soldier now a security operative/mercenary, has arrived to Chasm City, chasing after a certain Reivich, to kill him. At the same time his mind keeps feeding him past information on the man whose crime made him a religious figure after his execution at the planet in another system where he came from, the Sky’s Edge. There’s much more to it than what he at first thinks…
I could find a few themes that seem to run through the book – 1) Immortality (the kois, the type found in an alien species known as the grubs, the boredom of it, and it being one of the reasons why ), 2) Second chances and how they can change a person to become either better or worse (how ), and one more, I guess, could be the Game, or hunt, as a business, as a pastime for bored immortals… we have seen a mention of it before, in the Prefect stories.
In this book we also get the first mention of a future threat, if one pays attention to what Sky Haussman hears from .
Schuyler “Sky” Haussman’s story is both interesting, but also a bit weak in some unnameable way. It takes a moment to realise why we get his story in-between the main one; it’s not just the symptom of the religion-virus going on at Sky’s Edge. Sky’s crime is also the reason why the planet is in perpetual war, and a north-south type one too, on a planet with strange native creatures (important for the plot, and how Tanner ). How Sky’s end in martyrdom is not really - that’s pretty smart though you don’t feel much like cheering at him as you read it: that part of the past, that version of the man deserved to be changed for the better later...
Lots of interesting people, buildings, and homes, on both Chasm City, and one Rust Belt place we visit, the Refuge. Another Rust Belt place, Hospice Idlewild, got cheers from me – it’s sometimes really nice to ‘see’ a place again, after reading about it in the Prefect books. Also the comment about the ’s part in the spreading of the Melding Plague got a OMG-moment from me. When Tanner takes the ship down, we get in that part also some light on the languages of this ‘verse briefly, which is interesting. Reivich’s place at the Refuge sounded rather beautiful, and some places at Chasm City’s Canopy level interesting, especially the giant koi fish of Escher (yeah) Place. (Canopy level is the upper, more upper-class level, where the immortals and those interested in hunting live; while the Mulch is for the ordinary beings, including the humanlike pigs.)
Some music nods again: Yellowstone’s neighbor gas giant, Tangerine Dream; Tanner’s comment on ‘rattus norvegicus’ (that Stranglers album), and the author has clearly liked Gene’s “Sleep Well Tonight” song, as it gets the nod in one end sentence.
The decline of Chasm City was both sad yet interesting; seeing the place after becoming familiar to it in Prefect books made me remember the Reading about how the Melding Plague spread and twisted and changed things and people was scary.
In the end, Tanner manages to . Here we also, nameless for now, meet a new, soon to be important figure, . And that made me happy.
This might be in the weaker end of the books of this ‘verse, but still quite important to it, and very interesting. So while it’s not a good ‘first book’, it is still a worthy ride.
I will start by saying: this is not a good book to start reading the ‘verse with; I feel like there are some weaknesses to this book that make it a 3.5 star read. The book did stay on my mind long after; the details within are strengths against any weaknesses. And when you’ve read “Absolution Gap”, you
I also think that you really do need to read “The Prefect”/”Aurora Rising” and “Elysium Fire” books first to understand the depth to which Chasm City, on planet Yellowstone, and the Glitter Band, now the Rust Band, have decline from their glory days, and thus feel a bit more sorry for their current state, after the Melding Plague’s trail of destruction (and we do find out the source for it during the story) that started seven years before this book’s story.
But here’s the plot: Tanner Mirabel, a former soldier now a security operative/mercenary, has arrived to Chasm City, chasing after a certain Reivich, to kill him. At the same time his mind keeps feeding him past information on the man whose crime made him a religious figure after his execution at the planet in another system where he came from, the Sky’s Edge. There’s much more to it than what he at first thinks…
I could find a few themes that seem to run through the book – 1) Immortality (the kois, the type found in an alien species known as the grubs, the boredom of it, and it being one of the reasons why ), 2) Second chances and how they can change a person to become either better or worse (how ), and one more, I guess, could be the Game, or hunt, as a business, as a pastime for bored immortals… we have seen a mention of it before, in the Prefect stories.
In this book we also get the first mention of a future threat, if one pays attention to what Sky Haussman hears from .
Schuyler “Sky” Haussman’s story is both interesting, but also a bit weak in some unnameable way. It takes a moment to realise why we get his story in-between the main one; it’s not just the symptom of the religion-virus going on at Sky’s Edge. Sky’s crime is also the reason why the planet is in perpetual war, and a north-south type one too, on a planet with strange native creatures (important for the plot, and how Tanner ). How Sky’s end in martyrdom is not really - that’s pretty smart though you don’t feel much like cheering at him as you read it: that part of the past, that version of the man deserved to be changed for the better later...
Lots of interesting people, buildings, and homes, on both Chasm City, and one Rust Belt place we visit, the Refuge. Another Rust Belt place, Hospice Idlewild, got cheers from me – it’s sometimes really nice to ‘see’ a place again, after reading about it in the Prefect books. Also the comment about the ’s part in the spreading of the Melding Plague got a OMG-moment from me. When Tanner takes the ship down, we get in that part also some light on the languages of this ‘verse briefly, which is interesting. Reivich’s place at the Refuge sounded rather beautiful, and some places at Chasm City’s Canopy level interesting, especially the giant koi fish of Escher (yeah) Place. (Canopy level is the upper, more upper-class level, where the immortals and those interested in hunting live; while the Mulch is for the ordinary beings, including the humanlike pigs.)
Some music nods again: Yellowstone’s neighbor gas giant, Tangerine Dream; Tanner’s comment on ‘rattus norvegicus’ (that Stranglers album), and the author has clearly liked Gene’s “Sleep Well Tonight” song, as it gets the nod in one end sentence.
The decline of Chasm City was both sad yet interesting; seeing the place after becoming familiar to it in Prefect books made me remember the Reading about how the Melding Plague spread and twisted and changed things and people was scary.
In the end, Tanner manages to . Here we also, nameless for now, meet a new, soon to be important figure, . And that made me happy.
This might be in the weaker end of the books of this ‘verse, but still quite important to it, and very interesting. So while it’s not a good ‘first book’, it is still a worthy ride.
October 29, 2018
Chasm City is proof that Alastair Reynolds has a dark side. And it is wonderful.
This is a revenge tale following a bad ass, morally ambivalent (yet perhaps ultimately redeemable?) mercenary pursuing his prey across ruined, deformed worlds devastated by war and a catastrophic nanobot plague. During his pursuit, he slowly unravels, revealing a murky, disturbing past.
The story is smart and quick paced, and the world building superb. Reynolds paints a brooding, menacing landscape, brimming with mind blowing cyberpunk motifs based on runaway nanotech, cyerbnetics and genetic engineering.
"As for the fourth, she figured in my plans, which is why she wasn't currently emptying her soul into a puddle of warm rain."
This is a revenge tale following a bad ass, morally ambivalent (yet perhaps ultimately redeemable?) mercenary pursuing his prey across ruined, deformed worlds devastated by war and a catastrophic nanobot plague. During his pursuit, he slowly unravels, revealing a murky, disturbing past.
The story is smart and quick paced, and the world building superb. Reynolds paints a brooding, menacing landscape, brimming with mind blowing cyberpunk motifs based on runaway nanotech, cyerbnetics and genetic engineering.
"As for the fourth, she figured in my plans, which is why she wasn't currently emptying her soul into a puddle of warm rain."
November 23, 2015
Revelation Space has a few faults of its own, but they are hard to focus on amidst the plethora of evocative images and grand ideas that Reynolds is working with. But Chasm City is torturous. My intention over the course of this review is to dissuade readers who are coming from Reynolds' debut novel eager for an expansion of the ideas, people, and places present in that piece. For the sake of your time and enjoyment, look elsewhere!
Chasm City is essentially a neo-noir detective story centered on Tanner Mirabel, an ex-soldier now working in security. Tanner has lost someone near and dear to him, and he's ready to even the score with the posthuman being who took her from him. Along the way, he's going to learn that he's not exactly the person he thinks he is.
The plotting here is ridiculously poor. I realize that Reynolds enjoys writing long novels, but this story could be told in roughly 200 hundred pages and the book would be immensely better for it. There are some nice sci-fi elements to flavor the conventional hard-boiled detective's revenge, and they deserve time in the light, but a talented writer could have told this story with just as much of the interesting content in under half the length.
There was not a single character in the entirety of this book that I had the remotest emotional connection with. I do not require much, Mr. Reynolds, but throw me a bone. There was no true attempt to delve into Tanner's psychology, hilarious considering what must have been going on in this man's head in order to justify his actions. You see, not only is Tanner seeking revenge for the woman he loved while hurting a bunch of people in the process, but he has also been having strange dreams, vivid recollections of a past life aboard a flotilla of generation ships. Not just anybody's life either: cult messiah figure Sky Haussman's life. The true heart of the tale is an identity crisis, but without any real attention payed to the internal struggle with, you know, identities. Tanner Mirabel is not a solid character to begin with, so it comes as little surprise that his metamorphosis into a completely different person doesn't exactly cause me to move to the edge of the seat.
The Sky Haussman portions are certainly the best element of the entire story, with a handful of captivating ideas at play in these interludes: uplifted dolphins that have descended into psychosis during captivity and a ghost ship both horrific and majestic in its alien nature come to mind. Unfortunately, the interesting elements of this tale have little to do with the noir (in space!) Reynolds is eager to tell, and they get little attention or development.
The majority of the novel deals with the eponymous metropolis, also somewhat interesting, but we get very little sense of what it is actually like to live in the urban nightmare (Chasm City is corrupted by a swarm of molecular machinery toeing the line between nanotech "grey goo" and biological pathogens). There are two or three descriptions of interest (shape-shifting buildings and corpses frozen in the architecture), but not enough to compare with other dying cityscapes. If you find me standing in the concourse of a Multiverse Transit Station, you'll find a ticket in my hand for Rapture or New Crobuzon long before Chasm City.
What's funny/sad about this second Revelation Space novel is that Reynolds took one of the (very few) dull ideas in Revelation Space, and decided to devote a 600 page novel to it. He had the entirety of his intriguing universe to play with: Conjoiners, Ultras, Pattern Jugglers, Shrouders, lighthuggers and time dilation, etc, etc. Out of all those things, he chose to talk about the origins of Shadowplay instead. A bad decision that led to a bad book.
Chasm City is a meandering, bulbous second novel from Alastair Reynolds, a step down from the promising work he showed in Revelation Space. Not recommended. (Despite this, I will certainly be returning in the near future for Redemption Ark. This universe is too much fun to write off yet!)
Note that I listened to the audiobook, read by John Lee. I like to mention this fact in reviews because it is important: listening is never the same and reading from the page. However, I believe that Lee did as good a job as he could with the material provided. Also, I greatly enjoyed Lee's reading of Perdido Street Station, so I don't assign him any blame.
Chasm City is essentially a neo-noir detective story centered on Tanner Mirabel, an ex-soldier now working in security. Tanner has lost someone near and dear to him, and he's ready to even the score with the posthuman being who took her from him. Along the way, he's going to learn that he's not exactly the person he thinks he is.
The plotting here is ridiculously poor. I realize that Reynolds enjoys writing long novels, but this story could be told in roughly 200 hundred pages and the book would be immensely better for it. There are some nice sci-fi elements to flavor the conventional hard-boiled detective's revenge, and they deserve time in the light, but a talented writer could have told this story with just as much of the interesting content in under half the length.
There was not a single character in the entirety of this book that I had the remotest emotional connection with. I do not require much, Mr. Reynolds, but throw me a bone. There was no true attempt to delve into Tanner's psychology, hilarious considering what must have been going on in this man's head in order to justify his actions. You see, not only is Tanner seeking revenge for the woman he loved while hurting a bunch of people in the process, but he has also been having strange dreams, vivid recollections of a past life aboard a flotilla of generation ships. Not just anybody's life either: cult messiah figure Sky Haussman's life. The true heart of the tale is an identity crisis, but without any real attention payed to the internal struggle with, you know, identities. Tanner Mirabel is not a solid character to begin with, so it comes as little surprise that his metamorphosis into a completely different person doesn't exactly cause me to move to the edge of the seat.
The Sky Haussman portions are certainly the best element of the entire story, with a handful of captivating ideas at play in these interludes: uplifted dolphins that have descended into psychosis during captivity and a ghost ship both horrific and majestic in its alien nature come to mind. Unfortunately, the interesting elements of this tale have little to do with the noir (in space!) Reynolds is eager to tell, and they get little attention or development.
The majority of the novel deals with the eponymous metropolis, also somewhat interesting, but we get very little sense of what it is actually like to live in the urban nightmare (Chasm City is corrupted by a swarm of molecular machinery toeing the line between nanotech "grey goo" and biological pathogens). There are two or three descriptions of interest (shape-shifting buildings and corpses frozen in the architecture), but not enough to compare with other dying cityscapes. If you find me standing in the concourse of a Multiverse Transit Station, you'll find a ticket in my hand for Rapture or New Crobuzon long before Chasm City.
What's funny/sad about this second Revelation Space novel is that Reynolds took one of the (very few) dull ideas in Revelation Space, and decided to devote a 600 page novel to it. He had the entirety of his intriguing universe to play with: Conjoiners, Ultras, Pattern Jugglers, Shrouders, lighthuggers and time dilation, etc, etc. Out of all those things, he chose to talk about the origins of Shadowplay instead. A bad decision that led to a bad book.
Chasm City is a meandering, bulbous second novel from Alastair Reynolds, a step down from the promising work he showed in Revelation Space. Not recommended. (Despite this, I will certainly be returning in the near future for Redemption Ark. This universe is too much fun to write off yet!)
Note that I listened to the audiobook, read by John Lee. I like to mention this fact in reviews because it is important: listening is never the same and reading from the page. However, I believe that Lee did as good a job as he could with the material provided. Also, I greatly enjoyed Lee's reading of Perdido Street Station, so I don't assign him any blame.
May 31, 2013
Once again Alastair Reynolds has me all over the place with my thoughts on his books. There are parts of this story that I throughly enjoyed and would happily give four stars and then there are great rafts of it that I found dull and couldn't wait for the chapter to end. Thus three stars is the result.
Chasm City has some Revelation Space theme to it, but you couldn't be faulted in thinking that there were two Alastair Reynolds in the authoring world. This story is told in such a different way that it is hard to credit I had just finished reading the same writer.
Chasm City is told in three story arcs that curve to a convergence to give you a final understanding of wtf this is all about.
The three stories are all interesting and two of the arcs are historical to the first as characters begin to gain their memories back of past traumatic events. There are whole bunch of familiar themes with this, including a copy of The Running Man theme and whilst I was reasonably enjoying the different stories I really really didn't like the main character...at all. It was almost as if the character had sat in his cubicle and read every Stainless Steel Rat novel he could find. His lines were corny and the delivery awful. I admit this may have something to do with the way the book was read by the narrator.
This review is coming over somewhat negative and I guess that is indicative to the things that grate you as opposed to the parts that went well. Overall, the story was interesting and there were lots of parts that had my attention. But I didn't love it and never once found myself not being able to put it down.
I am going to persevere with Reynolds as I have been told, I should like his work, given my tastes. I am trying Redemption Arc next and hope to find that place where I start to enjoy the story.
Chasm City has some Revelation Space theme to it, but you couldn't be faulted in thinking that there were two Alastair Reynolds in the authoring world. This story is told in such a different way that it is hard to credit I had just finished reading the same writer.
Chasm City is told in three story arcs that curve to a convergence to give you a final understanding of wtf this is all about.
The three stories are all interesting and two of the arcs are historical to the first as characters begin to gain their memories back of past traumatic events. There are whole bunch of familiar themes with this, including a copy of The Running Man theme and whilst I was reasonably enjoying the different stories I really really didn't like the main character...at all. It was almost as if the character had sat in his cubicle and read every Stainless Steel Rat novel he could find. His lines were corny and the delivery awful. I admit this may have something to do with the way the book was read by the narrator.
This review is coming over somewhat negative and I guess that is indicative to the things that grate you as opposed to the parts that went well. Overall, the story was interesting and there were lots of parts that had my attention. But I didn't love it and never once found myself not being able to put it down.
I am going to persevere with Reynolds as I have been told, I should like his work, given my tastes. I am trying Redemption Arc next and hope to find that place where I start to enjoy the story.
March 10, 2012
It's a great sci-fi book, maybe one of the best of this century. There are three main points, why it is so good.
1. First is a plot. It is interesting, captivating and consistant, but this isn't so important. Composition is. There are three story lines, from the first glance almost unconnected. But when they finally merge, you can see, how good Reynolds is. This composition is kind of quirky, but it makes the whole picture very beautiful.
2. This is hard sci-fi. Reynolds is a physicist, so his fiction is realistic. There are no faster-than-light space travels; beam weapons, i mean of small arms, do not blow up targets or kill instantly, unles some vital organs are hit etc. Although there are some moments i do not agree with, as a whole, from the point of view of natural sciences it is mostly realistic. But strange thing, this book is more realistic from the point of view of logic, psychology, and social sciences. And this i like very much.
3. And the most beautiful part - the atmosphere. Virgin jungles of Sky's Edge, small crews at large ships of flotilla drifting in a deep space, and urban ambient of this mesmerizingly nice megalopolis Chasm City. All this is described so vividly that you can feel this deep solitude at the spaceship or weirdness and unsafety of the city. Could someone tell me how to get to Epsilon Eridani system? LOL
1. First is a plot. It is interesting, captivating and consistant, but this isn't so important. Composition is. There are three story lines, from the first glance almost unconnected. But when they finally merge, you can see, how good Reynolds is. This composition is kind of quirky, but it makes the whole picture very beautiful.
2. This is hard sci-fi. Reynolds is a physicist, so his fiction is realistic. There are no faster-than-light space travels; beam weapons, i mean of small arms, do not blow up targets or kill instantly, unles some vital organs are hit etc. Although there are some moments i do not agree with, as a whole, from the point of view of natural sciences it is mostly realistic. But strange thing, this book is more realistic from the point of view of logic, psychology, and social sciences. And this i like very much.
3. And the most beautiful part - the atmosphere. Virgin jungles of Sky's Edge, small crews at large ships of flotilla drifting in a deep space, and urban ambient of this mesmerizingly nice megalopolis Chasm City. All this is described so vividly that you can feel this deep solitude at the spaceship or weirdness and unsafety of the city. Could someone tell me how to get to Epsilon Eridani system? LOL
June 19, 2018
This works on so many different levels. It is an excellent sci-fi yarn with awesome ideas, it is a Memento-like who-the-fuck-is-who mystery, and at it's basest level it is an old fashioned revenge tale; and I loved every minute of it. This is my second Reynolds book after the original Revelation Space novel and while I loved both books, this was easier to read and flowed more smoothly. The gigantic concepts and shit are still there but the writing is more mature and confident. Nowadays this book would be split into two in order to make more money and all so I miss the days of these 800 page behemoths and not having to wait a year to finish a story originally meant for one book because of greedy publishers. To wrap it up, this is very cinematic in its delivery and it really does keep you guessing until the very last page. Five enthusiastic thumbs up.
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