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Chasm City (Revelation Space standalone)

4.07 of 5 stars 4.07 · rating details · 5,724 ratings · 267 reviews

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 M...more

Mass Market Paperback, 694 pages

Published May 27th 2003 by Ace Books (first published January 1st 2001)

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Sep 16, 2011 Joel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, audiobooks, sci-fi-fantasy

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,...more 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.(less)

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Sep 02, 2012 Ian rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobook, revelation-space, genre-bending, space-opera, steampunk, the-innocent-get-screwed

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 t...more

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Mar 20, 2013 Apatt rated it 5 of 5 stars

“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 t...more
“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!(less)

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Jan 05, 2009 Sfmurphy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Originally published at Strange Horizons.

On the nitrogen-methane world of Yellowstone, within the domed enclosure of Chasm City, humans had perfected a utopian civilization founded on nanotechnology. During the twenty-sixth century, Chasm City was considered the apex of cultural and technological achievement in human space. Immortality was taken as a basic right and the buildings themselves grew like trees.

Newcomer Tanner Mirabel, combat veteran turned security consultant, finds something diffe...more

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Jun 13, 2011 Zach Bartell rated it 3 of 5 stars

Alastair Reynolds is wildly imaginative, even for a science fiction author. Whereas in some science fiction books of similar length, the author might focus on the intensely creative development of a futuristic setting and of the interesting characters who live there, Reynolds does this in Chasm City and then creates fully realized settings two more times; we have action in the city and following the main protagonist who travels there to solve mysteries and pursue villains, then we have the actio...more

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May 04, 2009 Cecily rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi-or-futuristic

I read this because Alistair Reynolds is my teenage son's favourite author. Although it is sometimes labelled as Revelation Space book 2, he 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. bo...more I read this because Alistair Reynolds is my teenage son's favourite author. Although it is sometimes labelled as Revelation Space book 2, he 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.
(less)

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Aug 08, 2007 Silvercharmer rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Sci-fi fans, sci-fi writers

Shelves: space-opera, alastair-reynolds, best-books-ever, scifi-fantasy

This is the first alastair Reynolds book I read, and I was so blown off my ass I couldn't think straight for a few days. This guy has the perfect toolkit for writing science fiction: a background in astrophysics, an amazing imagination, a strong sense of character and a compelling plot with a deserving ending. What attracts me most to his writing is his uncanny grasp of human nature and human behavior, and what it would evolve into when projected into the future, when technological advancements...more

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May 29, 2013 David Conyers rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. One of the new wave British science fiction authors who write strong, believable space opera, Reynold’s Revelation Space series is stunning in its scope and imagination.

Chasm City was the first Reynolds novel I read and was the most visually impressive of everythign that I've read by him.

The story centres around two characters. The first is an ex-soldier turned security expert who finds himself on a strange high tech world recovering from the aftermath of a devastating alien plague. His memory...more One of the new wave British science fiction authors who write strong, believable space opera, Reynold’s Revelation Space series is stunning in its scope and imagination.

Chasm City was the first Reynolds novel I read and was the most visually impressive of everythign that I've read by him.

The story centres around two characters. The first is an ex-soldier turned security expert who finds himself on a strange high tech world recovering from the aftermath of a devastating alien plague. His memory is sketchy, but he knows he is chasing a man who wants to kill him to kill him first. The other story concerns a questionable leader of a fleet of slower-than-light starships racing to colonise a distant world, and the coup that results. Both characters are separated by both time and space, but their relationship is closer than anyone might suspect.

Reynolds is influenced by Larry Niven’s Known Space series and it shows in its grand scope and amazing ideas, but what Reynolds does so much better are his characters, his easy to read style and sense of pace. He even has transhumans or posthumans, highly evolved species of men and women who have transgressed the frailness of the human condition, and live almost immortal lives. However unlike many of his contemporaries, Reynold’s posthumans don’t lose their ‘humanness’ with their super abilities.

I also like that high tech is not available for everyone. For example his world of Sky’s Edge is reminiscent of a Latin American country stuck in a perpetual civil war, while his world of Yellowstone is like New Orleans after the cyclone, an amazing vibrant city struck down into squalor after a horrific external event. There are other high tech worlds out there, but they are keeping it to themselves. Unlike many science fiction writers, Reynold’s knows how to build believable political and cultural backdrops to his worlds.

Aliens feature in his stories and they are creepy, enigmatic and highly creative, often with bizarre Lovecraftian like characteristics.

Chasm City is not the only tale in the series, there is also the trilogy Revelation Space, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap, short story collections Diamond Dog, Turquoise Days and Galactic North, and the stand-alone novel The Prefect. If you like space opera big, exciting and action packed, this is a great series to read.

This review originally appeared on davidconyers.blogspot.com(less)

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Jan 17, 2013 Smcleish rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: owned

Originally published on my blog here in February 2002.

Reviews of Revelation Space, Reynolds' first novel, compared it to Dan Simmons' Hyperion. In terms of quality and subgenre, this comparison is justified; both are extremely good space operas. Chasm City is much more like Simmons in style and content than its predecessor; and without being derivative it maintains the standard.

Set in the same universe as Revelation Space, it takes place some time earlier. Its central character (and narrator) is...more Originally published on my blog here in February 2002.

Reviews of Revelation Space, Reynolds' first novel, compared it to Dan Simmons' Hyperion. In terms of quality and subgenre, this comparison is justified; both are extremely good space operas. Chasm City is much more like Simmons in style and content than its predecessor; and without being derivative it maintains the standard.

Set in the same universe as Revelation Space, it takes place some time earlier. Its central character (and narrator) is former soldier and security expert Tanner Mirabel, from the backward world of Sky's End, ruined by generations of warfare. When his employer and his employer's wife are murdered in the jungle, Tanner follows the man who arranged the killings to Yellowstone, thirty light years away. This trip for vengeance is one he can't easily return from, as his home will have greatly changed - travel is slower than light though with suspended animation. Even so, knowing that the last news he heard about Yellowstone is years out of date, he is totally unprepared for what he finds on one of the most technically advanced planets. A massive plague has basically turned all the nanotechnology wild, causing huge numbers of deaths as it mutates and leaving a shanty town in place of the main settlement on the planet, Chasm City, and causing the destruction of many of the orbitals which once filled much of the available space around Yellowstone.

This is not the only problem facing Tanner on his arrival, as he is suffering from a form of amnesia which is an occasional side effect of the revival from cryogenic freezing, and he appears to have been infected with an engineered virus, a piece of nanotechnology used by a cult on Sky's End for indoctrination - a truly frightening science fiction idea which I have not seen elsewhere even though nanotech is a trendy subject at the moment. These things combine to produce doubts of his own identity, a strange (and ambitious) effect in a first person narrative which is convincingly done by Reynolds.

Chasm City is perhaps not as involving as Revelation Space, but it certainly confirms Reynolds as one of the outstanding new writers of science fiction of this decade.(less)

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Jun 20, 2012 Joe rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is sort of a side story to the Revelation Space trilogy. The book begins on the human colony of Skys Edge. A world settled by generational ships and the only one successfully done so. The planet endured a century's long war over the actions of its founder Skylar Haussman.

The book follows a man named Caheulla as he tracks a ruthless killer who killed his protectees. He tracks the killer to planet Yellowstone. Home to Chasm City once the most advanced and prosperous city in human space. Now...more

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Jan 04, 2012 Peter rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Don't worry, I won't spoil the main plot resolution. Still, this review might be dropping a bit too many hints at what's generally going on and how it all ends. So, spoilers it is... I'd love to give this book four and a half stars. Alas, Goodreads doesn't allow that sort of thing in its rating, so it'll have to settle for four and give the main two narratives of the book two separate ratings in this review. So, allow me to elaborate.

Five stars for the scenes taking place on Sky's Edge and the h...more Don't worry, I won't spoil the main plot resolution. Still, this review might be dropping a bit too many hints at what's generally going on and how it all ends. So, spoilers it is... I'd love to give this book four and a half stars. Alas, Goodreads doesn't allow that sort of thing in its rating, so it'll have to settle for four and give the main two narratives of the book two separate ratings in this review. So, allow me to elaborate.

Five stars for the scenes taking place on Sky's Edge and the historical flashback dreams of the Flotilla's journey to said planet. I was glad to read in an older interview with the author that this part of the plot - tackled on only later - was originally missing completely, but he wisely decided to add it. If it wasn't added, the overall resolution would suffer. Seriously lose much of its mystery and impact and all that unpleasant jazz.

Also, kudos to Reynolds for the rather original choices in the ethnic ancestry of the settlers (I swear one of these choices is a tip-of-the-hat to Paul McAuley, considering Reynolds already dropped hints about the way McAuley worked with the same concept).

The growth of politicking, backstabbing and betrayal among the crews of the five ships is fascinating stuff in itself and would've been sufficient enough to fill a separate novel. Sky's gradual rise to power in the Flotilla is unsettlingly well-written - even though I sometimes had the impression that it's awfully convenient how people aboard the Santiago are suprisingly gullible (with the rare exception of Constanza). The part when Sky, Gomez and Norcquinco-whatshisname go searching for the fabled Caleuche and eventually find more than they ever bargained for, was, IMHO, the high point of the whole book - especially if you look at it in the context of the main trilogy that follows Chasm City. Beyond the incredible content, the Caleuche chapters had delicious horror atmosphere (otherwise absent in this RS book and not very long-lasting even in said chapters).

Four stars for the Chasm City sections. Even though Reynolds' love for noir and crime fiction really shows here (in a good way), I've found the third fourth of the Chasm City part of the story to be a bit tedious in a "running around, meeting this and this character, then departing for another chase, then another meet-up" sort of way. As a love letter to the post-Plague mean streets of Al's hyper-detailed fictional metropolis, it works well. But don't get me wrong : It does kind of feel like padding at times, certain situations repeat at least twice, then there's the aforementioned constant backtracking to places we've already visited. It isn't bad per se, but kind of starts reeking deja vu after a while (oh, the irony - given the backstory you'll eventually uncover).

As for the characters... Yeah, most of them are O.K., I guess. While most of the minor ones are your typical bit players and one-shots that eventually bite the bullet or just deliver a Chekhov's gun and leave the story, the glut of the secondary characters surrounding the protagonist for most of the book are nearly on-par with the main characters. Oh, yeah, the main ones. Well, needless to say, they carry the whole thing and there's more depth to them then meets the eye.

One minor quibble with the supporting secondaries, though : Why were they suddenly so keen on teaming up with the protagonist in the last 50 or so pages ? It felt a bit awkward, even Scooby-Dooish at times... :-D It just felt... a bit artificial. Also, the ending of the main plot, while quite exciting, suffered a bit from the "I'll pull out a Chekhov's gun from 300 pages before and solve my predicament in an anticlimactic fashion" syndrome. Bearable, but it kind of cheapened the whole resolution to me.

What else ? Not much to say. The cameo for good ol' Ana Khouri in the epilogue was a nice touch. :-)

In closing, is this a worthy prequel/companion/whatever to the main trilogy and the whole wider series ? I'd say : Definitely. Go read it.

Just don't expect it to be that similar. Some wider mysteries of the RS-verse are referenced and one or two even revealed (pun intended), but this is overall a more mundane, more personal story. Egoism, love, revenge, man's cruelty to his fellow man (and alien), cunning bastardry, redemption - well, you know, the stuff that humanity is made of... Incidentally, the protagonist reminds me a bit of a sci-fi edition of film!Jason Bourne, albeit with a far darker and complicated past behind his belt. (less)

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May 25, 2011 Karen rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Why I Chose This Book>
Last year I read a book by Alastair Reynolds called Pushing Ice. I picked up that book because it was 1) a big fat paperback to take on a long car ride and 2) it was about a moon of Saturn, and I really, really like planets. The book had me at the proverbial hello, and when I found myself with a need to pick out another book in a hurry, I went to the same author.

Nutshell Review of the Book
Chasm City is an entertaining, fairly predictable novel with a cartoony villain tha...more Why I Chose This Book>
Last year I read a book by Alastair Reynolds called Pushing Ice. I picked up that book because it was 1) a big fat paperback to take on a long car ride and 2) it was about a moon of Saturn, and I really, really like planets. The book had me at the proverbial hello, and when I found myself with a need to pick out another book in a hurry, I went to the same author.

Nutshell Review of the Book
Chasm City is an entertaining, fairly predictable novel with a cartoony villain that takes an oddly sunny turn at the very, very end. The critical praise blurb posted on the front calls it a “space opera,” and yep–-no quarrel there. Plus I’d totally watch this book on TV. But it’s not as good as Pushing Ice.

Detailed Review of the Book
Chasm City was a book that took a while for me to warm up to. There was a lot to like in what I was reading, and the world that it created was fleshed out with lots of detail, but there were three different story lines–-all equally engaging–-that for some reason didn’t mesh together well at the beginning. It wasn’t a chore to read, exactly, but I was skeptical about the book for a while because of these different threads. And then I hit that part in the book where I knew exactly how the three threads were going to connect, and that made the book much more appealing even if the flaws in the book were consistent throughout. I’m not a fan of first-person, either, but because this book wasn’t trying to be meaningful or artistic and the main character wasn’t angsty or excessively introspective, it was easy to acclimate to and ignore.

Tanner Mirabel Present was the primary narrative, and I liked the universe he moved through and how he interacted with the people he met. I liked the Mendicants, I liked the Canopy, I liked Dominika and Zebra and Chanterelle and the Pig People, and because the setting was so detailed and because the mystery was doled out at a good pace, his was a story I hated to leave and was always happy to get back to. Fortunately, his story took up the largest part of the book.

Tanner Mirabel Present spent a lot of time flipping back to Tanner Mirabel Past, who was far less interesting-–faithful bodyguard to a charismatic warlord type with a jungle compound, loving from afar the loyal wife to warlord, and a lot of guerrilla fighting in territory that was too much part Hyperion/part something Orson Scott Card for my liking. Cahuella, the warlord, was even a big game hunter with a secret museum. This narrative was dragged out and frankly sort of dull, and although it’s obvious at the end of the book why so much time was spent in this setting with these people, it was the weakest part of the story. Furthermore, Gitta, the beautiful, loving, and wise wife who had nothing to do but reassure the audience that Cahuella wasn’t totally a bad man, was in the story just to be killed just to give Tanner something to do, and that’s a trope that I’m tired of (and Gitta wasn’t even the only Disposable Woman in the book!). But that’s a rant for another time. Long story short: Tanner Mirabel Past got a lot of page-flipping from me. I really don’t think I missed anything important.

Storyline three was about Sky Hausmann, and it was very interesting for a very long while, before it decided to be cartoon villainy with a giant space maggot at the climax of the action. I’m not the kind of person that is uncomfortable with non-humanoid aliens, but a giant space maggot talking to a cartoon villain sort of undermines the drama. It was really good drama too–-three generations of people had been born and died on a ship intent on colonizing another star system, carrying frozen passengers who hoped to help settle new worlds, only to find when they’d arrived that while they were spending 150 years traveling the technology on Earth advanced so far as to basically make their heroic, multigenerational effort quaintly charming but pointless. You could make a whole book about just this, except in the middle of this is cartoon villain and a giant maggot, and you get all giggly. Add a psychotic space dolphin borg and a torture chamber, and you’re doing some page flipping through here, too.

And now it sounds like I’m down on the book, and I’m not-–I really did like the parts of it I liked, and even the Sky Hausmann set-up captured my imagination if the character himself was too goofy to be believed. What I wish I’d known before starting is that Chasm City is the second book of four or five in Reynolds’s “Revelation Space” series. That I didn’t notice is a good sign–-it’s a good standalone book–-but research here and there tells me that the Melding Plague that has caused so many problems for the characters of this book was established in the first book, Revelation Space. That explains the presence of some scenes and some adventures about Dream Fuel in Chasm City, I suppose, and the sad, sad tale that Giant Space Maggot tells to Cartoon Villain probably has backstory in the events in Revelation Space, but eh. I’m not sure I’m going to seek it out. This universe was perfectly coherent, although I’m kinda annoyed that I read a book in a series without checking first to see if it was the first installment. I’m usually more careful. Of course, you can usually tell on the first page if you are missing something. I’m not going to be too hard on myself.(less)

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Mar 27, 2011 Andreas rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Scary in it’s placing of humanity firmly at the bottom of the Universe’s pecking order, this series of books contains some pretty big concepts. Worth reading just for the descriptions of cultures and aliens. Watch out though, Reynolds is not afraid of making the Universe a scary place. I refused to read Redemption Ark close to bedtime. I would just lay awake and shiver at the thought of how huge the universe is, and how short-lived and fragile we are.

* Revelation Space – Cool, pure SF. The last...more

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Aug 08, 2010 Danielle Parker rated it 4 of 5 stars

Alastair Reynolds writes big books. Big in size: Chasm City is nearly 700 pages in the paperback mass market edition, and stuffed with enough detail on its future setting to fill a travel brochure. Big in scope: good and evil, vast reaches of time and space, men and mutant pig-men and aliens from the void. Chasm City is like a bowl of wildly overflowing yeast. Even the author can’t punch it down to an entirely manageable shape.

We start out with two interleaving story lines. One seems to concern...more

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Aug 04, 2010 Forrest Norvell rated it 2 of 5 stars

There's a pleasant attempt at 80s-style dystopian cyberpunk decadence crossed with widescreen space opera hiding somewhere in this baggy, shambling novel, but you have to wade through a lot of flat characterization, tin-eared dialog, and predictable plotting to get to it. If tragedy is the combination of irony and inevitability, its shadow hovers over the proceedings, but the blindingly obvious signposting of the narrative greatly weakens the effect. More ruthless editing would have helped this...more

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Jul 01, 2010 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

First things first: Chasm City is NOT Revelation Space number two, unless the information on Alastair Reynolds’ personal website is wrong. That seems unlikely. Chasm City is stand-alone and can be read at any time. You’ll hear various opinions, but I can only speak to one of them -- Chasm City is my second Reynolds, after Revelation Space, and I enjoyed reading City with the context Space gave me. I’m very much looking forward to the next book in the series.

Not that Chasm City is perfect, and in...more First things first: Chasm City is NOT Revelation Space number two, unless the information on Alastair Reynolds’ personal website is wrong. That seems unlikely. Chasm City is stand-alone and can be read at any time. You’ll hear various opinions, but I can only speak to one of them -- Chasm City is my second Reynolds, after Revelation Space, and I enjoyed reading City with the context Space gave me. I’m very much looking forward to the next book in the series.

Not that Chasm City is perfect, and in fact it is, overall, not as well-written as Revelation Space. Very little occurred in Revelation Space that didn’t make sense, that didn’t seem well-founded in the various agendas and quirks of each of the characters. It all fit very well together.

On the other hand, City feels a bit rushed in parts, more telling than showing, some of the dialogue clunky and unbelievable and quite naive for such street-wise characters, and some parts, especially toward the end game, after a shot down a long tube in particular, seemed far too easy for the protagonist to accomplish, and too anti-climactic to be believable.

It all became a little Scooby-Doo-ish, with the “you stay here/no I’m coming with you/no you’re not/yes I am.” Part of me thinks Chasm City, published second, yet feels more rough, might have been written before Revelation Space.

I would have liked to learn more about the mysteries as well, and I would have liked one detail in particular to be wrapped up -- which is explained away, unsatisfactorily, in the novel’s closing pages.

The novel accomplishes some clever stuff -- not the least of which is a charmingly noirish and dark, engaging and often page-turning story. I also enjoyed the shifting perspectives. While too abrupt at times, the shifts in time/place/character worked to keep me very much engaged. In many novels I often find these shifts expose one tedious, less engaging perspective that I typically dread to read through -- not so here.

Overall, City is probably a 3.5 that I’m rounding up to a 4. Space was a solid 4. This is an intelligent, well-written, dark and compelling space opera detective story. Tanner Mirabel is your Sam Spade. Think Blade Runner.

Highly recommended!(less)

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Aug 14, 2009 Jeremy rated it 3 of 5 stars

A well written dystopian novel, yet one which I had trouble connecting to. Not only had this far future society crumbled (thanks to the Melding Plague), but the story was told first person through the eyes of an equally crumbled human. Reynolds does a good job of keeping the reader guessing throughout the book, with surprising turns and believable technology, but I had higher hopes for the ending. I wanted the pain and ugliness described throughout the book to lead someplace redeeming. Perhaps t...more

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Mar 25, 2013 Michael Fox rated it 4 of 5 stars

Space opera. This book, Chasm City, is quality science-fiction, space opera. Very few writers in this genre can match Alastair Reynolds, move-for-move, in weaving an elaborate and dark story against elaborate and well imagined backdrops.

This book takes place in Reynolds' Revelation Space universe, in which many of his tales are told. Chasm City is the once glorious capital city of the planet, Yellowstone. The city, some years back, was over ran by a plague. This plague, although it didn't affect...more

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Jul 05, 2012 Jan Bednarczuk rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

I stayed up until 3 AM to finish this book.

Chasm City is set in Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space universe, although it is a stand-alone story. You don't have to have read any of the other books to appreciate it. That said, I'd recommend reading at least the first couple of books in the series (Revelation Space and Redemption Ark) first, because I think that will enhance your enjoyment somewhat.

The first part of this story had almost a film noir feel to it -- a trained mercenary tracks his pre...more I stayed up until 3 AM to finish this book.

Chasm City is set in Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space universe, although it is a stand-alone story. You don't have to have read any of the other books to appreciate it. That said, I'd recommend reading at least the first couple of books in the series (Revelation Space and Redemption Ark) first, because I think that will enhance your enjoyment somewhat.

The first part of this story had almost a film noir feel to it -- a trained mercenary tracks his prey on a dismal, war-torn planet, only to find out that the tables are turned and he is instead the one being hunted. And if the story had remained at that level, you might be able to classify this book as a pretty good hardboiled noir story.

But it doesn't. Interwoven with the story of the mercenary is the story of Sky Hauptmann, a man who we come to discover committed heinous acts far in the past, and who has a planet named after him. His life history starts showing up in bits and pieces, in the dreams of the mercenary who began the story. And so throughout the book, we follow these two stories, which weave and dance around each other, teasing us with the prospect that they may somehow connect ultimately in some way.

The plot of this book is tight, and gripping, and full of twists and turns. I sort of guessed one of the main twists about two-thirds of the way through, but then later found out that my guess was only halfway right, and that the real twist was much more clever and complicated than I'd imagined. This really is one of those stories where you just have to keep reading it to find out what happens, until it's 3 AM and you turn the last page, glad you've finally made it to the end but yet still wishing there was more.

I am perhaps somewhat biased, because I love the Revelation Space series and can't get enough of Reynolds' writing, but I thought this book was just fantastic. Dazzling settings, complicated characters, and a driving, intricate story. Highly recommended.(less)

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Mar 23, 2012 Taylor Preston rated it 5 of 5 stars

A seamless blend of baroque, far future SF and seething hard boiled crime fiction. This novel hit all the right notes for me and is easily in my top ten list of favorite novels of all time. Chasm City is a densely plotted, mind-blowing journey through the dark, multifaceted histories of not one but two colony worlds in a bizarre, hostile, and gothic 26th century universe of decaying technology, exotic bioengineering, and cutting-edge cybernetics, told through the eyes of a street smart mercenary...more

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Dec 31, 2010 Akiva rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was almost a really good book. It suffered some of the same problems as his first book Revelation Space: awkward dialogue, a lack of sympathetic characters, general bloat. But somehow these flaws didn't matter as much. The storyline seemed more focused (though even longer) and the characters had more charm and clearer motivations than Revelation Space, at least until the end when everything got confused. And one of the plotlines, taking place in weird dream flashbacks aboard a generational...more

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Mar 26, 2012 Princessjay rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy

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.

A...more 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.(less)

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Jan 22, 2012 John rated it 5 of 5 stars

A welcome return to the Revelation Space universe, Chasm City seems more focused than the books of the main trilogy. Like those books, Chasm City has several narrative strands whose relationship to one another doesn't become clear until towards the end; but in Chasm City those strands have at least some connection from the start, since they're all being recounted or experienced as dreams by the single first-person narrator. The reader is kept trying to work out how the strands relate to one anot...more A welcome return to the Revelation Space universe, Chasm City seems more focused than the books of the main trilogy. Like those books, Chasm City has several narrative strands whose relationship to one another doesn't become clear until towards the end; but in Chasm City those strands have at least some connection from the start, since they're all being recounted or experienced as dreams by the single first-person narrator. The reader is kept trying to work out how the strands relate to one another, rather than, as in the other books, simply waiting for the different sets of characters to meet up.

Also helping with the focus are the lower stakes--the fates of individual people rather than of the human race--and the main part of the story takes place over days rather than decades. This means that the plot can be very intricate, based on the actions of a few key players, spinning a complex but believable web of intrigue that the main character and the reader race one another to understand. Where the main galaxy-spanning conflict of the Revelation Space trilogy does briefly impinge it feels like a barely-necessary interruption to the real business of the characters' personal conflicts.

The book's main weakness is the plot sometimes seems engineered to give the main character (and thus the reader) a guided tour of the Chasm City setting. The city is fascinating and beautifully realised, but not everything we learn about it is important to the story. The main character and several of the other major players are outsiders to the city, which is both a blessing and a curse: one the one hand, it lets the reader see the city through the eyes of a new arrival; but on the other hand, the details of the city are detached from the main character's mystery and thus don't always capture the reader's interest. The core conflict of the story is based on events that took place before the characters arrived in Chasm City, and you can imagine it playing out in much the same way if the characters had gone somewhere else. This isn't a major failing: the result is just a great book with a misleading title, since the book isn't *about* Chasm City--it's just set there.
(less)

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Feb 17, 2011 Alexandra rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: re-read, read-in-2011

As with Revelation Space, this is the second time I've read Chasm City - and the first time was some years ago. Consequently, while there were a few things I remembered quite well, I still managed to be surprised by some of the twists and turns of the plot. This time, there were more occasions on which I picked up hints and allusions; I was quite proud of guessing what might be going on until I remembered that I'd already the thing...

It's another awesome space opera from Reynolds. One of the thi...more As with Revelation Space, this is the second time I've read Chasm City - and the first time was some years ago. Consequently, while there were a few things I remembered quite well, I still managed to be surprised by some of the twists and turns of the plot. This time, there were more occasions on which I picked up hints and allusions; I was quite proud of guessing what might be going on until I remembered that I'd already the thing...

It's another awesome space opera from Reynolds. One of the things which I had misremembered - and perhaps it applies more to one or both of the other Revelation Space books I've not reread yet - is the amount of cross-over between the stories. There are some allusions to ideas and people from Revelation Space here, but they are both very definitely stand-alone novels. And I like that; it's a universe, rather than a series. This book has quite a different feel from Revelation Space, which is interesting to see. It is largely told with a first-person narrator - with occasional flashbacks to an historical character - and consequently the story is mostly linear (with the exception of those flashbacks, and the narrator's own thinking about his past). I enjoy a narrator - particularly one, as in this instance, who is a bit unreliable. In fact I enjoyed most of the characters in this novel; there aren't many, with the exception of the narrator (Tanner) who are particularly deeply developed, but they are certainly all individuated without becoming cliches. There's a nice range of female and male characters, doing a range of different activities and with a range of different motivations - I think I said a similar thing about Revelation, but it's true and it's one of the appealing things about Reynolds.

The settings for Chasm are great. We're in about the same time period as in Revelation, so chunks of the galaxy have been colonised, but there's no FTL so getting places is still damn hard work. There are two prime locales: Chasm City itself, of course, on the planet Yellowstone, and the planet of Sky's Edge. These are two radically different places, so Reynolds gets to indulge in two quite different visions of what interplanetary colonisation might look like. In thinking about that issue, I utterly adored the slow revelation about how the colonisation of Sky's Edge came about; the slow generation-ships thing is enthralling, for me, and thinking about the lengths people might go to to get an edge is intriguing. Chasm City, of course, is a wonderfully outrageous city, and I loved that Reynolds opened with an excerpt from a document explaining how the city has been affected by a plague - so the reader has that extra bit of information, and thus an advantage over Tanner. For me, it heightened the sympathy the reader could feel for him. And the plague itself iconic: something that affected the machinery of the place doesn't seem disastrous, until you remember that this is a society using nano, with therefore machinery in everything - and everyone.... There are so many possibilities inherent in that idea.

The plot itself has a kinda revenge tragedy thing going on, which can be a bit tedious but in this instance is skilfully drawn out and well played, too. In fact there are numerous side-plots that at times could threaten to overwhelm the central point - the revenge - but ultimately Reynolds draws them all together and reveals that actually, he knew what he was doing all the time (of course).

Another of my favourites.(less)

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Sep 15, 2010 Jenny rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 25, 2010 Michael Alexander rated it 4 of 5 stars

Rounded up to 4 from 3.5, because 3 is a little toooo mean.

This is going to sound weird for a hard-as-diamond hard sf New Space Opera book, but this book could have used a tad more worldbuilding and a hundred pages less plot. I wish we'd SEEN more melting buildings, witnessed more people with implants gone haywire by the Melding Plague, or more of a glimpse of the haywire scenery of the Rust Belt.

But that, I guess, is the upside and the downside of an Alastair Reynolds book. A million crazy far-...more

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Oct 05, 2010 Lightreads rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, science-fiction

I am so jaded: you read one book about plagues that eat nanotechnology, and religious experience as the result of an indoctrinal neurovirus, and the particular kind of psychosis that results from decades-long sublight space flights, you’ve read them all.

Particularly when you’ve actually read three, all by the same guy. Seriously, Alastair Reynolds, think about something else!

And this book is a mess anyway – bloated, terrible dialogue (seriously, the narrator of my audiobook did the best anyone...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Milton Soong rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

I first heard of Alastair Reynolds when his Revelation Space was hailed as a new hard Scifi masterpiece. I liked the science part of it and the imagination behind it, but the writing style needs work. It gotten so bad that it's the first book I abandoned before going into the LAST CHAPTER. That's saying something.

I picked up his 2nd work: Chasm City because I have some credit at the local used book store. His writing has improved much and this is a better written book, though the premise is much...more

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Dec 30, 2010 Brian rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed, in-full

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...more

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Sep 11, 2010 Adrian Sud rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is probably my favorite novel of the Revelation Space universe. By this point, Reynolds has polished his character writing ability; Sky is possibly the most disturbed character I have ever felt a personal affinity for in a novel. The novel follows an unusual path, starting with a character who appears intrinsically good, exploring his forgotten past life of near maniacal selfishness and cruelty, and pulls him back out of it to, if not redemption, then at least the defeat of his own inner de...more

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About Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds, former scientist and now full-time writer. Most of what he writes is science fiction, with a strong concern for scientific verisimilitude (although he is prepared to break the rules for the sake of a good story). He has lived in England, Scotland and the Netherlands where he worked as an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency until 2004, but now makes his home back in his...more

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“There was something heartbreakingly beautiful about the lights of distant ships, I thought. It was something that touched both on human achievement and the vastness against which those achievements seemed so frail. It was the same thing whether the lights belonged to a caravel battling the swell on a stormy horizon or a diamond-hulled starship which had just sliced its way through interstellar space.” — 1 person liked it

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