City of Last Chances

 City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 500 pages,

Pressure builds in the city of Ilmar as it sits uneasily under occupation by the Palleseen Empire, who seek to bring "perfection" to the whole world. But the City of Bad Decisions has never taken easily to perfection, and factions all through the city are being brought near the boiling point, a tension that is pushed over the edge when a Palleseen official is killed in The Anchorwood, the mysterious and mythic passage to other worlds.

This book is structured in a very interesting way that I feel really furthers its premise. Each chapter is told from a new perspective, giving the reader an extremely thorough view of the city as a whole. Eventually six or seven characters emerge as really significant recurrent characters we come back to repeatedly, which allowed me to really invest in individual characters in addition to the plot and the city. The whole cast of criminals, activists, zealots, priests, foreigners, and everyday people was very engaging to me, and despite being a longer book with a broad focus I never found myself bored. This is the second book by Adrian Tchaikovsky I've read, and I've been extremely impressed by the craft of both so I definitely plan to read more by this author.