City of Last Chances is a standalone novel by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The book explores the city and factions of the city of Ilmar, occupied three years ago by the Palleseen Sway, an all-conquering empire that seeks to “perfect” the world-and, with its control over Ilmar, potentially many worlds. For on Ilmar’s edge lies the Anchorwood, a grove of trees that, when the moon is full, becomes a gateway to distant, alien lands.
When the second-most important Palleseen official in the city is killed while acting as an ambassador to the Wood, his protective charms stolen, the consequences ripple to every part of Ilmar, sparking a series of events that could lead to the city’s liberation, or to its destruction.
Tropes present in City Of Last Chances include:
- Abandoned Area: The Reproach, and with very good reason.
- Actual Pacifist: Yasnic's God demands his followers be one.
- All for Nothing: The expedition into the Reproach to rescue Companion-Archivist Nasely amounts to this, with Nasely ending up dead, Hellgram failing to find his wife, Ruslav getting fatally injured, and Lemya becoming infected by the Reproach's madness.
- Anti-Magical Faction: The Palleseen. Not only do they want to eradicate superstition from the world, but they confiscate any magical items-including the very bones of dead magicians-they find to suck the magic out of them to power their weaponry. This even extends to the personal bonds between gods and their followers, as Yasnic finds out.
- Badass Pacifist: After his life is saved by converting to Yasnic's religion, Ruslav is forced to become one, as committing violence will lead to his wounds reopening. This is best shown when God is forced to keep Ruslav alive after Yasnic's apostasy, which Ruslav puts to good use acting as a baton-proof human shield so the Gownhall students can rescue Ivarn.
- Big Damn Heroes: Led by Shantrov, the insanity-inducing, hallucinatory forces of the Reproach are what save the refugees from the Gownhall from being arrested by the Palleseen forces set to guard the Anchorwood and Anchorage.
- Bittersweet Ending: By the end of the book, hundreds of people are dead, including several people the characters knew, Shantrov and Lemya are both changed forever by the Reproach, and the Palleseen are still in control of the city. On the other hand, the Gownhall is allowed to remain open because the Palleseen need its knowledge, the Reproach finally finds a measure of peace, the Donjon's records have been destroyed and its prisoners freed, and the many worship-deprived gods of Ilmar are being tended to by Yasnic, leading to a small-scale religious revival.
- Body Horror: When he hanged the old Duke, Sage-Invigilator Culvern received the Duke's curse of having his body rot while still alive. Culvern's body is wracked with constant pain, bursting pustules, and a truly horrible smell that strips varnish from wood. He deserves every bit of it.
- Body Surf: The reason why no-one ever kills an Indweller. The other Indwellers will demand compensation through someone else, preferably the slain Indweller's killer, wearing the dead Indweller's mask, which causes the Indweller's spirit to possess the new body.
- Creepy Centipedes: The Bitter Sisters use a giant one in their base to dispose of people they want to make an example of. And it's Hellgram's lost wife.
- Dirty Coward: For all his talk of Ilmari history and freedom, Ivarn Ostragar turns out to be one, and as soon as his life and position are threatened by an actual revolt he tries to flee the city.
- The Dragon: While Sage-Invigilator Culvern is the most powerful Palleseen official in Ilmar, he spends most of his time suffering the effects of his curse, leaving Fellow-Inquirer Hegelsy to be the main face of the Palleseen occupation.
- The Empire: The Palleseen Sway is a vast colonial empire, stretching over at least four countries (the Pallesand Archipelago, Allorwen, Telmark, and Nihilostes' homeland), and is the method by which the Palleseen seek to perfect the world by extinguishing religion, magic, and the cultures and languages of conquered peoples.
- Eldritch Location: The Anchorwood definitely counts, being a Portal Crossroad World filled with bizarre armored fish-headed monsters who eat anyone who enters with a protective "passport".
- Evil Smells Bad: The first sign of Sage-Invigilator Culvern's presence in a scene is likely to be a character describing the awful smell that comes before him.
- Fantasy Gun Control: Played straight despite Ilmar being in a fantasy version of the Industrial Revolution. Instead of guns, the most common ranged weapon are Palleseen batons-voice-activated wooden rods that use pure magic as fuel, and shoot out streams of burning hot magical force.
- Forbidden Zone: The Reproach, a section of the city which was previously the mansions of the aristocracy, now overtaken by a Mind Virus. It's contained by a "firebreak", first by a ring of literal burned buildings in the Armigers' first attempt to contain it, and second by a magical ring of heavy-duty wards. People go in there anyways because it's filled with unbelievably valuable treasures from its old residents. They often don't come back out. And the survivors swear that the firebreak is slowly widening, and the Reproach is bigger than it used to be...
- Gambit Pileup: After the death of Sage-Archivist Ochelby, every faction in the city tries to take advantage of the situation, try to hunt down their rivals, or uncover who stole the Archivist's priceless, protective Anchorwood charm. This eventually culminates in the Spark of the Rebellion.
- Gods Need Prayer Badly: The power of a god is directly correlated with how many followers they have; a god such as Yasnic's, who only has one priest and no followers, is a knee-high figure in ragged robes. So long as they act within their purview and extend their power to willing converts, however, a god's own strength does not seem to matter too much when preforming miracles. The question of what happens to a god when they lose every last follower pursues Yasnic and his god. It turns out they stick around. Ilmar is filled with tiny, powerless gods who no longer have worshipers, and ultimately Yasnic decides to become a priest to all of them.
- Hoist by Her Own Petard: The Bitter Sisters are both killed by the giant centipede they used to feed their prisoners to.
- Hot as Hell: The circle houses are Allorwen brothels specializing in this; their human workers are able to summon demons who customers can sleep with.
- Inn Between the Worlds: The Anchorage is a variation; it isn't located between worlds physically, but socially. The building isn't considered a real part of Ilmar by the city's citizens, and the Anchorage's keeper acts as an ambassador to the Indwellers, which gives it a strong liminal quality.
- Interservice Rivalry: One of the big hinderances for the otherwise-overwhelming power of the Palleseen occupation. All of the occupation's various Schools resent each other for having certain privileges that others lack, and this causes Palleseen officials to prioritize their own missions and safety above the wellbeing of other branches of the occupation.
- La Résistance: They come in several different flavors:
- The Ravens, controlled by the Armiger families, old aristocratic houses.
- The Vultures, criminal factions who use patriotism as an excuse for raiding businesses that support the Palleseen.
- The Shrikes, murderers out to kill whatever Palleseen they can get close to.
- The Herons, river smugglers who bring weapons into the city from the surrounding country, and who get refugees out.
- The Gownhall students, idealists who believe that The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified.
- The Siblingries, factory workers who banded together first to resist the power of the Armiger factory owners.
- Les Collaborateurs: Ilmari who join the Palleseen aren't uncommon, and can distinguished by their uniforms in a lighter shade of grey. The resistance groups hate them, and the Palleseen use them as Cannon Fodder.
- Magically-Binding Contract: The method by which demons are bound, which in the modern, industrial era has gone from a close, personal relationship between summoner and demon to an efficient process, in which the services of enslaved demons are sold en masse to humans by the Kings Below for industrial labor.
- Magic Knight: Possibly more of a Magic WWI Soldier, but Hellgram employs both a conjured sword and spellcasting alongside his physical strength, a combination that makes him the best human(oid) fighter in Ilmar.
- The Man They Couldn't Hang: By the end of the book, Ruslav, Lemya, Yasnic, Ivarn, and several other characters count as this. Ivarn even counts twice-over.
- Mind Virus: The Reproach's curse is a fantasy version of this. Someone afflicted by the curse begins to believe themselves to be a member of the old Varatsin ducal court, hallucinates the Reproach as it was during Ilmar's medieval period, and tries to draw the uninfected into the curse by calling them ancient titles.
- A Nazi by Any Other Name: With their desire to “perfect” the world, gray uniforms, brutal police state tactics, and hatred of a particular ethnicity (the Allorwen), the Palleseen certainly count as this. Their goal being to rid the world of superstition, religion and magic and being a "temporary" committee that will allegedly step down once "true perfection" is achieved also calls to mind the Soviet Union.
- Never Mess with Granny: A twofer. The Bitter Sisters might be older women, but they are absolutely terrifying in their positions as heads of the Vultures. When the rebellion begins, they even put on armor and carry weapons.
- Portal Crossroad World: The Anchorwood becomes one on nights when the moon is full. Travelling through it is extremely dangerous due to the monsters that live there, so unless you're an extremely capable fighter (such as Hellgram), a traveler will need powerful, rare protective charms to pass through.
- Pyrrhic Victory: The rebellion ultimately turns out to be one of these for the Pals. They succeed in putting down the students' revolt and the Siblingries' march, but they lose a lot of their men to the students, the Siblingries and the Reproach with little chance of getting replacements in the near future, the factories that produce materials for their war efforts are going to be out of commission for a long while, and the wider resistance movement of Telmark still exists.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Most of the city's resistance factions are willing to get their hands as dirty as the Pals' are to free their city and make sure that they get to be on top instead of the other resistance groups when the city is free. This attitude is best exemplified by the murdering, terroristic Shrikes and the brutal, criminal Vultures.
- Right Handvs Left Hand: True of both the various resistance factions and the Palleseen occupation.
- Rousing Speech: Lemya is a fan of them, and gives her best one trying to convince Ivarn to return to the Gownhall. It doesn’t work, but she manages to convince others they can fight back.
- “They’re nothing but hollow men. They believe in nothing, they fight for nothing. Their whole perfection is a nothing! If we show them that we will not be erased, I KNOW that they will break. The Turncoats will cast off their uniforms. The people, the Armigers, all the birds, maestro! All of them. But it has to start somewhere. Someone has got to tell them NO, while there still IS someone. Or else we’re less and less until we’re gone!”
- Shining City: The Divine City is a utopian city-state off the coast of Telmark where everyone is happy and peaceful and lives free of want. Careful magic has created a closed system in perfect equilibrium, all resources recycled endlessly without any waste or spoilage. The Palleseen obsession with perfection comes partially from imitation of the Divinati. There is a cost, of course, which is that its population is very slightly too large to be sustainable, which means that every year a very small number of children are judged insufficiently perfect to live in a perfectly managed utopia and exiled.
- Spark of the Rebellion: After Ivarn tries to return secretly to the Gownhall and has to be saved by Shantrov and other students from soldiers, the students fortify the Gownhall Square, the Siblingries strike and begin marching in support of them, and the Vultures use the chaos to loot and burn as much Palleseen property as they can find.
- State Sec: The School of Correct Speech serves as this for the Palleseen occupation, charged with the prosecution of magicians and religious figures, torturing captives and rooting out rebel cells. Accordingly, they are possibly the Palleseen School least-liked by the Ilmari, and even the other departments of the Pals dislike them for their power and ruthless enforcement of doctrine.
- Switching P.O.V.: Exaggerated. Every chapter is written from the viewpoint of a different character, and it takes eleven chapters for one of those viewpoints to recur. New POV characters continue to be introduced throughout.
- War Is Hell: One of the book's themes is that, even when resisting a hostile power is absolutely necessary, the actual fighting will always be something heartbreaking, terrifying, and painful, and while the students are shown to be one of the most moral resistance factions, they are also portrayed as naïve due in large part to a mistaken belief that War Is Glorious.
- This is also true of the WWI-esque hellscape of a world that Hellgram comes from, where "the Great War" has entirely subsumed all of society.
- We ARE Struggling Together: Almost every one of the city various resistance factions hates the other groups, even though the Pals oppress all of them-the Siblingries dislike the Armiger families for being their long-time industrial overseers, the Armigers hate the Vultures for being criminals who would bring chaos to Ilmar if they came out ahead in a revolt, and everyone sees the Gownhall students as a bunch of inevitably doomed, naïve fools.
- Weird Trade Union: Although the Siblingries mostly function like normal unions, the fact that the factories they work in are mostly driven by demons means that they include hellieurs-sorcerers specializing in making contracts with demons-in their ranks.
- The Worm That Walks: The body controlled by the spirit of the long-dead Varatsin Duke is one of these made of rats.
