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Chasm City

(Revelation Space #0.3)

Alastair Reynolds

4.12 · Rating details · 23,802 ratings · 885 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

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Mass Market Paperback, 694 pages

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

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Mar 07, 2018 Mario the lone bookwolf rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reynolds-alastair

Welcome to the fabulous, rotten, 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?

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-F Welcome to the fabulous, rotten, 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?

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 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.

Oh, the hybrids, often seen, but also used in a more positive way, but Reynolds goes full frontal pessimism and makes them (view spoiler). 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.

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 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 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, profiteering, basically the same as today in real life on bad, old earth, just with far cooler products.

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.

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, 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 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 mentioning 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... ...more

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Sep 29, 2015 Kevin Kelsey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, read-it-again, read-2016

Posted at Heradas

“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?”

Very, very good. One of those books that I massively enjoy having read, past tense, but ultimately didn’t enjoy while reading. It slogs, and turns its wheels for about 200 pages in the middle, but I see now why it was necessary, and it ultimately pays off in strides.

Strong similarities to Iain M. Banks’ Use of Weapons, except that it didn ...more

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Nov 18, 2014 Scott rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourites, science-fiction

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 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. ...more

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Oct 21, 2012 Apatt rated it it was amazing

“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, bu
“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! ...more

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Jan 03, 2010 Dirk Grobbelaar rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction, favourites, books-i-own

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 ...more

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Jul 17, 2011 Joel rated it liked it

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, 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. ...more

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Oct 27, 2020 Barbara rated it liked it

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 yea ...more

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Jun 25, 2013 David Sven rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, sci-fi

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 c ...more

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Mar 22, 2012 Princessjay rated it it was ok

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 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. ...more

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Apr 06, 2017 Karl rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The book Chasm City is the sequel to "REVELATION SPACE" and is a bit better than the first. ...more

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May 09, 2020 jade rated it it was ok

Recommends it for: appreciators of strong endings who don't mind flat characters

Recommended to jade by: my poor brother-in-law who now has to suffer me ranting about this book in his DMs

Shelves: unpopular-opinion, friend-rec, science-fiction, space-opera

“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 sec ...more

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Nov 24, 2016 Stuart rated it really liked it

Shelves: favorites, fantastic-weird, distant-worlds, hard-sf, cyberpunk

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, i 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. ...more

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Sep 17, 2016 Sarah rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audio

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 c ...more

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Aug 17, 2019 picoas picoas rated it liked it

Shelves: 2019

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

Stupid Space Elevator: "Chasm City" by Alastair Reynolds

How far down can you bring the science in science-fiction before it becomes simply fiction? For instance, if we image a world were exploration of the moon never ceased, and wherein this exploration led to development and a permanent society but stayed within the context of current existing technology, is this science-fiction? Or is science-fiction simply described as anything diff ...more

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Mar 14, 2009 Kara Babcock rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, 2013-read, space-opera, from-library, mystery

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 Revelat ...more

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Oct 11, 2011 Ian rated it it was amazing

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

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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Apr 21, 2009 Cecily rated it really liked it

Shelves: scifi-future-speculative-fict

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 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.
...more

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Aug 01, 2012 Guillermo rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction

"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 ...more

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Dec 20, 2014 Claudia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: z-to-a-reynolds, sci-fi

“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 s

...more

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Nov 02, 2013 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biopunk, transhumanism, worldbuilding-sf, space-opera, sci-fi

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 r ...more

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Oct 28, 2010 Jurgen_i rated it it was amazing

Shelves: contemporary-sci-fi, favorites

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 fic ...more

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Apr 09, 2020 William rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Anyone who has read the earlier books in the series

Shelves: favorites

Chasm City is the third prequel to Alistair Reynolds' "Revelation Space" series, but it is not a sequel to The Prefect, and Elysium Fire. In addition to the main series and prequels, many characters and places are present in "Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alistair Reynolds", Pushing Ice (which I have not yet read), Galactic North (which I have not yet read), Diamond Dogs, and the short story Open and Shut (which I have also not read). As for the reading order, my recommendation would be th ...more

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May 18, 2018 Emily rated it liked it

Shelves: sci-fi

I really wish GoodReads did half stars - because I liked this one more than just a "3 rating" would suggest. For me, 4 and 5 star books are things that I would like to read again, they are books I loved, and books I would recommend to others. This is definitely a book I'd recommend to someone that liked sci-fi, but it isn't going to make my favorites list or be something I'll read again.

Chasm City was a good story, but it was slow to get going. There really isn't one likeable character in the e ...more

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May 14, 2013 Lee rated it liked it

Shelves: space-opera, science-fiction, epic-science-fiction

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 t ...more

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Sep 23, 2015 Bee rated it really liked it

Shelves: recommended-to-me, audiobook, space-opera, military-sci-fi, science-fiction, dystopian-post-apocolyptic

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 act ...more

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Jun 18, 2018 Chris Berko rated it it was amazing

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 ...more

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Aug 08, 2007 Swaps55 rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Sci-fi fans, sci-fi writers

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

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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Oct 29, 2018 Jamie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

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 ...more

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May 13, 2015 William rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Ignore the cliched and slightly silly first chapter, and Keep with the story

From chapter 2 on, it's great. A Cook's tour of Chasm City and some very entertaining and interesting characters. A great back story, and several central mysteries.

Would be 5-star but the ending was a bit ham-fisted.

I just started #3 in the Revelation Space series, Redemption Ark and it starts off wonderfully!

NOTE: Please, please also read Turquoise Days, a novella, and short stories Enloa, Weather, and Zima Blue. Surely ...more

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Mar 31, 2011 Tudor Ciocarlie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, z-revelation-space

Chasm City is a rare breed - a complex well-integrated multi-layered plot and a page turner with satisfying pace right up to the end. It is a book that makes you wonder in delight but at the same time envelopes you in tension and mystery. It will engage with your mind and leave you very satisfied at the end.

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About Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds

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I'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 Revela ...more

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Revelation Space (3 books)

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The Prefect (Prefect Dreyfus Emergency, #1)

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Quotes from Chasm City

“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.” — 20 likes

“War was about yawning chasms of inactivity, punctuated by brief, screaming interludes of action. And in those brief, screaming interludes, events happened both quickly and with dreamlike slowness, every instant burned into memory.” — 8 likes

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Chasm City

(Revelation Space #0.3)

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