Chasm City

A very complex story split between post-plague Chasm City and the war-ravaged planet of Sky’s Edge in which we learn a fair bit of the history of both. It starts out as an apparently straight-forward assassination chase but becomes increasingly complex, both due to the plague situation on Yellowstone and some interior issues with out would-be assassin. Are these just a by-product of the hibernation sleep or is it something more sinister?

In fact it turns out to be several layers of sinister with multiple nested personalities. This actually gets so complicated that I started to loose track of character motivations, in particular for the main protagonist. I didn’t totally buy the initial assassination premise, it seemed a bit extreme to take a 30 year hibernation sleep and as more layers of personality were peeled back I didn’t really understand their motivations either. There were also quite a few convenient coincidences and meetings, and it seemed somewhat incredible that our hero encounters a previously unknown species both far in his own past en-route to Sky’s Edge and the bottom of the chasm.

Overall though this has all the classic Reynolds touches, a huge imagination, exciting incidents and massive depth of universe building (not that I would particularly like to live there!). This was a re-read, I recall owning the paperback more than 20 years ago and I know that I read it but I’m not sure how much I really understood the first time around, I just have a memory of a few scenes but the final reveal was apparently all new to me.

A worthwhile read, just for the imagination displayed and the clever structure and story-telling but I can never quite past how bleak the revelation space universe is!