Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds
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(Mass Market Paperback - Reissue)
- Pub. Date: May 2003
- 704pp
- Sales Rank: 84,588
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: May 2003
- Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Format: Mass Market Paperback, 704pp
- Sales Rank: 84,588
- Series: Revelation Space Series
- ISBN-13: 9780441010646
- ISBN: 0441010644
- Edition Description: Reissue
Synopsis
In a city overrun by a virus that attacks both man and machine, an agent pursues a lowlife postmortal---and uncovers a centuries-old atrocity that history would rather forget.
Publishers Weekly
In this worthy follow-up to his well-received first novel, Revelation Space (2001), an especially intelligent far-future foray, British author Reynolds transmutes space opera into a noirish, baroque, picaresque mystery tale. Honor requires that Tanner Mirabel, a weapons specialist/bodyguard, track down and destroy the man who killed his boss. Tanner's pursuit takes him to the planet Yellowstone, where a nano-plague has mutated the glittering human cultural showcase of Chasm City into something bizarre, dark and extremely dangerous. He's aided or threatened or both, at different times by a host of human and not-quite-human characters. Relying on his own combat skills and hard-boiled attitude, Tanner keeps seeking revenge even though he begins to wonder why he's doing it, especially after intrusions of other people's memories lead him to suspect he's not who he thinks he is. Inventiveness and tone are Reynolds's strong points. Presented in a sustained burst of weirdness, the novel's details are consistently startling but convincing in context, and the loose ends eventually tie neatly together. The narrator's tough-guy stance works too, both as an expression of Tanner's personality and as a defensive reaction to the setting's intimidating strangeness. Think of a combination of the movie Blade Runner and one of Jack Vance's ironic SF adventure novels. If the ending feels a bit flat, that's probably inevitable after the exuberant display of wonders earlier. Reynolds remains one of the hottest new SF writers around. (Apr. 2) Forecast: Science Fiction Chronicle chose Revelation Space as Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year; Locus selected it as one of its Best First Novels of the Year. Expect this one to receive similar kudos. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
Alastair Reynolds was born in Wales. He has a Ph.D. in astronomy. Since 1991, he has worked for The European Space Agency. He is a long-time contributor to Interzone, the premier professional science fiction magazine in Great Britain. One of his stories, A Spy in Europa, appeared in the 1998 edition of Gardner Dozois's The Year's Best Science Fiction.
Customer Reviews
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Awesome spectacle, inconsistent charactersby Anonymous
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December 09, 2003: If you're looking for a book to lift up your spirits, stay away from this one. I introduced myself to this author with Chasm City based on the Hard SF/Space Opera classification the publisher advertised and though I found a lot to like, there was a little bit more that I didn't like. What worked for me were the large-canvas spectacles of an advanced society (mostly) reduced to rubble by a nanotech virus, a wild ride on a space elevator, a race across the the galaxy by three starships that are able to squeak out 8 percent of the speed of light, and cool alien fauna that reminds all of the natives somehow of giant snakes. However, the characters in here are mostly forgettable and the ones that aren't are certainly not likeable. I'm old fashioned in that I prefer reading a story where I root for the protagonist. After about a third of the way in, I was pretty disturbed by the behavior of pretty much everyone. The author admirably weaves together some personalities in one character, but the end result lost its credibility with me. Also, the author just is not able to telegraph plot hints without making them too explicit, while on the other hand coincidences seem to happen serendipitously to further the plot. I'll read the author's next book because I see lots of potential here, but also lots of room for improvement.
Needs a *lot* of workby Anonymous
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July 30, 2003: Chasm City was a tough book for me to review, especially without spoilers. Let me say up front that this is the first book I have read by this particular author. The novel basically has two story lines, there is the Sky Haussmann storyline and the Tanner Mirabel storyline. I liked most of the Haussmann storyline although it did start to get weak towards the end. Overall the pacing of the book is sluggish. The author plods from one plot point to the next, never really building up momentum or tension about how things will work out in the end (more on this later). Like I said, I did like the Haussmann parts of the book for the most part. What I didn't like about the Tanner Mirabel storyline can be summed up as follows: Pace: most of the sluggishness of the book exists in the Tanner Mirabel part, although even the Haussmann part starts to slow down as the two plots start to merge in the last quarter of the book. The pace also comes across to me as choppy. We race from place to place never really seeming to accomplish much. There was more than one event in the book where I finished reading and thought 'what was the point of that?'. I assumed that these events would become important later in the story but they never really seemed to. Character development: Other than the main character, most of the people (and things) that we are introduced to are kept 2-dimensional. Even main characters that are crucial to the plot aren't really developed very well. Two of the characters that make it to the ending are kept so shallow that their personalities seemed to merge by the time the characters were brought together. I think they were meant to be 'bookend' characters, personality-wise but ended up being interchangable. By the end I couldn't really tell them apart. Telegraphing plot-twists: Reading this book I kept expecting to see a commercial for Western-Union, no joke. Every major plot twist is telegraphed well in advance. One plot point that I assume was supposed to be part of a 'shocker' ending was pretty much spelled out about 230 pages in and believe me, I groaned when I read that particular passage. The rest of the 'shocker' parts were also spelled out well before the ending. Remember when I mentioned building tension? It's hard to build tension when you insist on making the ending so painfully obvious halfway into the story. Deux Ex Machina: Every time our hero gets himself into a fix he has to rely on someone else to come along and save him. Now, if you read the book the hero is made out to be someone who would never have to rely on someone else. Eventually you have to wonder why. This would actually be my second example of telegraphing because once I noticed it the rest of the ending fell into place. The last couple of sections of the last chapter: Ick, ick, ick. There's nothing else to say. One of the lamest wrap-ups that I've seen in a long, long time. In conclusion, I give this book three stars. I'd give the Haussmann storyline maybe four stars on it's own. The rest of the book only deserves a one.
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