Chasm City

From Publishers Weekly In this worthy follow-up to his well-received first novel, Revelation Space (2001), an especially intelligent far-future foray, British author Reynolds transmutes space opera into a noirish, baroque, picaresque mystery tale. Honor requires that Tanner Mirabel, a weapons specialist/bodyguard, track down and destroy the man who killed his boss. Tanner's pursuit takes him to the planet Yellowstone, where a nano-plague has mutated the glittering human cultural showcase of Chasm City into something bizarre, dark and extremely dangerous. He's aided or threatened or both, at different times by a host of human and not-quite-human characters. Relying on his own combat skills and hard-boiled attitude, Tanner keeps seeking revenge even though he begins to wonder why he's doing it, especially after intrusions of other people's memories lead him to suspect he's not who he thinks he is. Inventiveness and tone are Reynolds's strong points. Presented in a sustained burst of weirdness, the novel's details are consistently startling but convincing in context, and the loose ends eventually tie neatly together. The narrator's tough-guy stance works too, both as an expression of Tanner's personality and as a defensive reaction to the setting's intimidating strangeness. Think of a combination of the movie Blade Runner and one of Jack Vance's ironic SF adventure novels. If the ending feels a bit flat, that's probably inevitable after the exuberant display of wonders earlier. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal When security specialist Tanner Mirabel loses a client, killed by an assassin named Argent Reivich, he sets off on a manhunt to bring Reivich to justice. His search leads him to the domed community of Chasm City, located on the planet Yellowstone. There he confronts the city's strange, mutated inhabitants victims of a nanotechnological virus and ultimately comes up against his own worst fears and inner demons. The author of Revelation Space combines sf noir with technothriller in a dark vision of the future that belongs in most sf collections. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Enter Series Index : 02 of 07 Record Notes : Found Part of Series Calc Series Group : Revelation Space Test Search : Chasm City / Alastair Reynolds Test Compare Series to Entered: eq Formats : EPUB Calc ESI Combined : 02 of 190 Quick Search : Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space Number of Words in Auth: 2 Has Cover : Yes All Identifiers : isbn:9780575073654 Test Text Series Index: 2 Single Author : Alastair Reynolds Raw Title : Chasm City Calc ESI Part 2 : of Sorted Author by LN, FN: Reynolds, Alastair EBook : Have ES Group : Serified_E Title Length : 10 Num of Aut : 1 ES Cover Quality : ICBF Record ID : 1445 Enter New Series (Calced): Serified_E.Revelation Space.Scifan.02 of 07..ICBF ES Name : Revelation Space Custom Series : SIPY.Revelation Space.Scifan.2 of 7..ICBF Uncomma Author : Alastair Reynolds ES Genre : Scifan Calc New Series : Revelation Space.... Calc ESI Part 3 : 07 Compare Author : eq Calc ESI Part 1 : 02 ABook : E_Only Title Parm A : Chasm City The once-utopian Chasm City - a domed 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 its people to the very buildings they inhabit - only the most wretched, grim sort of existence remains. And it is through this city that security operative Tanner Mirabel must pursue the object of his vendetta: a lowlife postmortal named Argent Reivich. But as Reivich keeps slipping through the cracks of Chasm, Tanner will be taken far beyond the mere settling of a score - to come face to face with a centuries-old atrocity that history would rather forget