Chasm City: Alastair Reynolds

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Humanity survived though, falling back onto long abandoned technology such as steam power, and the city stratified itself into two layers: The Mulch, and The Canopy.

Tanner¿s pursuit of Reivich takes him across light-years of space to Chasm City, the domed human settlement on the otherwise inhospitable planet of Yellowstone. After the starships reach their final destination, named Sky's Edge, Haussmann is ultimately convicted and executed for his crimes. I guessed the main plot twist about three quarters of the way through ( though not every nuance ), but this didn't spoil the book as it was interesting to learn the history that made the twist possible. Definitely inventive and highly entertaining, this sci-fi thriller is a deep preview into the future of human race, with all tricks we can already predict now: perspective of limited immortality, scanning of personal experiences into computers, minuscule and gigantic machines permeating every sphere of live and bearing the seeds of mortal dangers, swapping of memories and erased personalities, brain implants, body sculpture etc feeding the hungry reader with nightmarish visions.

Several of my GR friends have read Chasm City and had mixed reactions ranging from "it sucks" to "it's just okay. there’s hints scattered throughout the various storylines, and the ending is pretty much all the threads of a tapestry suddenly converging to show you the full, mind boggling picture. 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. And nano machinery that made art of buildings was infected to transform the city into something grotesque and treelike.

Lumea Orașului abisului este însă foarte bine dezvoltată și destul de coerentă, conținând detalii tehnice, dar și altele ce dau veridicitate (etnografie, mitologie, religie etc. Chasm City is framed and largely written in the voice of Tanner Mirabel, a security expert who has come to Chasm City to avenge the death of his former client's wife at the hands of a "postmortal" noble named Argent Reivich. By contrast, the relatively few wealthy people in Chasm City - who've had their 'mechanics' removed - live in elevated homes in the canopy. Pline de clișee, aceste umbre sunt mânate de colo-colo, fără ca acțiunile lor să fie motivate în vreun fel din punct de vedere psihologic. I first read Revelation Space nearly eight years ago and didn’t much care for it; it had some promising aspects but was weighed down by stilted dialogue, shallow characters and a bloated prose style.Many plot options, the dealers being the humans or aliens, the influence on trade and politics, and, most important, it´s influence on the character´s personality, motivations, and abilities, thereby changing progress and payoff depending on the individual influence of the substance on setting and protagonists.

The use of low-tech also resembles the post-fossil fuel future society of Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl.

This civilization, though we never see it much, brings to mind the decadent future milieu of Iain M. Reynolds for the clarity of his writing, even without any chapter labeling the reader is never confused. When hamadryads approach adulthood, they wrap themselves around trees and meld with the trunks, becoming part of the structure of the plant. Tanner's pursuit of Reivich takes him across light-years of space to Chasm City, the domed human settlement on the otherwise inhospitable planet of Yellowstone. in the end, i could ramble on about this book’s faults for ages, but how much you enjoy this book will probably depend on how much you will appreciate the last fifth of the book, and how you interpret the true themes and mirabel’s journey as a character.

Chasm City, the largest on Yellowstone, is now a semi-post-apocalyptic ruin in which the lucky survivors (of which there are still millions) have removed their swish sci-fi implants and rely on more fundamental technology like bulky mobile phones and honest-to-god steam power. Pero lo mejor de todo es el sentido de la maravilla que tiene Alastair Reynolds, su forma de abarcar cientos de años en una misma historia y que todo cuadre.Tanner arrives to find that Yellowstone, the most advanced civilization in human history, has descended into squalor; an alien nanotech virus known as the Melding Plague has wreaked havoc throughout the system. 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.