Chasm City is Reynolds' second novel and it's set in his Revelation Space universe. Unlike Revelation Space, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap, which have to be read in that order, this book is a standalone and can be read without any prior knowledge of the Revelation Space universe. I enjoyed Chasm City tremendously. Had I finished it last year it would probably have been on the best of 2009 list.

Full Random Comments review ( )

My second Reynolds of the year. After a few months of little sci-fi, I plunged back in with a 600 page space opera set in Reynold's Revelation Space universe.

Unfortunately Chasm City is not as successful as Revelation Space or Redemption Ark, the second in that series. R Space and R Ark have a grand, sweeping feel taking in several groups of people whose histories and future are linked.

Although it takes a similar long view of history and the impact of long past events, Chasm City focuses on the story of only one man, Tanner Mirabel, who has come to Chasm City to seek revenge for the death of a woman he was tasked to protect. Chasm City was once a centre of wealth, opulence and progress. Arriving seven years after the end of a devatsating plague, Mirabel is confronted with a city of decay and amorality.

There's no doubting that this book is as absorbing as the other Reynolds I have read. Unfortunately the story of one man, however complex, is too little to fill the large number of pages and it started to get predictable towards the end. ( )

Set several hundred years in the future, people are now capable of copying their memories to computers, changing their appearance, and artificially prolonging their lifespans. As such, they tend to get bored easily and hang on to grudges for very long amounts of time. This book had a convoluted plot of mistaken/hidden/changing identity. The story was interesting and held my attention easily, but at times it felt rather contrived. For my tastes, there was a bit too much of people holding other people at gunpoint and pausing to explain their lifestory and motivations before finishing the job.

I was also somewhat disappointed because I felt like some of the most interesting characters were glossed over and didn't get their due. Sky Haussman's subplot was by far the most interesting, and yet its ending was definitely a let down. Constanza could've done a lot more. And how about Sleek? This psychopathic dolphin barely made an appearance, but when he was first mentioned I thought there would definitely be cool things in store for him. And Gideon? Was there even a point to Gideon's character? Perhaps the characters will have more of a role in other books set in this universe, but in this book they were disappointing ( )

I thought Chasm City was the sequel to Revelation Space, but it's just a stand-alone story in the Revelation story arc. According to Reynolds' website (www.alastairreynolds.com, in the FAQs), he suggests that Chasm City can be read at any time. I found that the story mentioned events that occurred in Revelation Space, although it didn't require you read it to understand the story.

** Having started Redemption Ark, the next book in the series, I think that reading this book right after Revelation space was the perfect spot, and would highly recommend it. **

Chasm City was a great read, very well paced and difficult to put down, especially as it sped up towards the end. Reynolds is an excellent sci-fi author, and does a great job explaining things without going too far and boring the reader.

There are two main parts to this story, The "current" arc with Tanner Mirabel (the main character), and the "past" arc with Sky Haussmann, a notorious badguy on the Sky's Edge, the world that Tanner is from. Tanner works for Cahuella, a weapons dealer and all-around not particularly nice guy as a bodyguard. Argent Reivich, a man who's family was killed by weapons stolen from people who bought them from Cahuella, takes his pain out on Cahuella, has his wife killed, and nearly kills Cahuella, too. Tanner takes off after Reivich to get revenge. Tanner narrowly escapes a deadly ride up a space elevator, saves everyone on board, and wakes up in a new star system 15 years later. He has some sleeper-amnesia, but slowly gets over it. At some point, Tanner was also infected with a religious virus from a group of people that worship Sky Haussmann which modifies his synapses to have memories of what happened to Sky while on board the generation ship launched from Mercury to 61-Cygni.

** Stop reading this review now if you don't want it spoiled! **

As Tanner gets nearer to Reivich, he slowly becomes more confused by the virus, and his memories are being mixed together as Sky Haussmann's as well as Cahuella's. As he works through this confusion, he gets caught up in several murders, human hunts, and other general badness. It slowly begins to dawn on Tanner that he is not really Tanner, but Sky Haussmann--a more-or-less immortal person that buried his past to start a new life--as Cahuella. As he realizes this, Tanner also realizes he's NOT Tanner Mirabel, and the real Tanner is chasing him just as he was chasing Reivich.

This novel was excellent, and I can't wait to read more of Reynold's books, they're incredibly great science fiction. ( )

Chasm City takes place in the same space-world Reynolds created for his Revelation Space trilogy, but its story-line and characters are entirely distinct in a way that allows the reader to pick this novel up as a free-stander. You do not need to have read the trilogy for any necessary back-story, nor do you need to have read Chasm City to fill in any of the story of the trilogy.

Here, the reader gets a deeper understanding of the melding plague, and its effect on the planet Yellowstone and its inhabitants. What was disappointing about Chasm City was its noticeable lack of the hard sci-fi edge that exists in the trilogy. There's very limited use of anything "scientific" in this episode at all, and what's worse, Reynold's literary methods have by this point become so familiar that any perceptive reader who has read the trilogy will know how this book is going to end by the halfway point. Add to that the overly convenient fact that all of the protagonist's enemies miraculously turn out to be on his side and helping him, and this book just doesn't even come close to meeting the bar that Reynolds' other works have set. It was a fun read, but ultimately nowhere near as good as it should have been, given the undeniable talent and imagination of this writer. Overall, a disappointment. ( )