This too bares its resemblance to other works and perhaps I couldn’t help but let this flavour my opinion of the work: the gods here are manifested by their followers, or lack-of and their power relies directly on how many followers they have. The gods: God, Zenotheus, both of different faiths and both lacking in worshippers and followers because the School of Correct Thought stamped them out. More specifically, it reminds me of Guerdon from the Gutter Prayer, for all its layers and magics and different people sandwiched on top of each other.
There’s buildings and walls and brick that are like drunkards slouched and it all comes alive as something that splutters and just barely clings to life with the characters in it. The way Tchaikovsky writes the city as its own living and breathing animal only adds to the intrigue. I really do love a city setting in a fantasy, but only when it is as grim and full of its own life as this is. IIlmar takes on a life of its own, just like Guerdon, and Mordew, it seems to breathe a life of its own, though the breaths are wretched and filled with Demons, despair, and knives that will slit your throat. Immediately, I was transported back to Jia and Guerdon in these pages, but it was only a passing whiff of their scents because Ilmar itself was a blend of something in itself. This work wore its inspirations on its sleeves, heavily reminiscent of the Black Iron Legacy and The Last War.
Tchaikovsky’s City of Last Chances weaves complex family structures, pantheons, and warring factions into a gloomy, occupied city-scape – Ilmar has long been without hope, long been a city of divided beliefs and downright debauchery and crime, now occupied by the perfectionist Pals. Ilmar, some say, is the worst place in the world and the gateway to a thousand worse places.Ī huge thank you to Cassie and Head of Zeus for including me on this blog tour! What will be the spark that lights the conflagration?ĭespite the city’s refugees, wanderers, murderers, madmen, fanatics and thieves, the catalyst, as always, will be the Anchorwood – that dark grove of trees, that primeval remnant, that portal, when the moon is full, to strange and distant shores. The city chafes under the heavy hand of the Palleseen occupation, the choke-hold of its criminal underworld, the boot of its factory owners, the weight of its wretched poor and the burden of its ancient curse.
There has always been a darkness to Ilmar, but never more so than now.
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