What fun to be dragged out of my comfort zone (by my son!) and into the folds of science fiction! Chasm City was part of a keep-giving Christmas gift from my kids, by which I get to open one new book per month from each of them. This is one of my eldest's favorites. Returned from a two-week vacation in Italy, this makes a great debut back to my blog!
For a century and a half, a flotilla of spaceships makes its way across the universe, away from Earth and towards a new star at "Journey's End". Each of the five ships has a fleet of elite passengers that have been cryogenically frozen along with a group of highly educated and trained caretakers. These caretakers know that they will die aboard their ship and their offspring will eventually take over. One such offspring is Sky Haussmann. While on board his ship, Sky learns from his father that all of the "Sleepers" on the ship have been enhanced to be immortal. Sky is all too aware that there exists a rivalry - a race of sorts to reach Journey's End first; to be the first to colonize and reap the rewards of getting to land first. The secret Sky learns about his origins coincide with the beginning of his motives to be the first ship to arrive.
Simultaneous to this storyline is that of Tanner Mirabel. Tanner resides on a planet called Sky's Edge and his timeline is years ahead of Haussmann's. As a soldier and an assassin, Tanner is on the hunt for a man named Argent Reivich. He seeks to eliminate him in retribution for murdering someone dear to Tanner. After surviving a nuclear attack on a bridge leading form Sky's Edge to space, Tanner begins to suspect he has a viral infection which manifests in a stigmata and causes him to have dreams which eventually morph into visions about Sky Haussmann's life.
As Tanner pursues Reivich to Chasm City on the planet of Yellowstone, Tanner begins to feel as if Sky is somehow steering him. Chasm City has been infected with a plague. People and even buildings in Chasm City have been physically mutated. A stratification has occurred wherein the city has been divided into a "Canopy", where the rich and powerful reside and the "Mulch" where the less-privileged scrape away what existence they can. The people in the canopy have the means to bioengineer themselves and even their pets. Canopy residents change their bodies with the same ease and frequency as cutting their hair and alleviate their boredom with deadly human hunting games and by taking a drug called "dream fuel".
The storyline brings us closer and closer to where Tanner's life and Sky's life intersect. As a character named Zebra in the Canopy of Chasm City says, who would want to be pinned down by just one identity? This proves to be not only reflective of this future universe Alastair Reynolds has created but foreshadowing of the plot as well. Interstellar travel, immortality, gigantic snakes, alien creatures, and mind-bending memory and identity swaps collude to make this novel fascinatingly cool! Riddled with complicated science speak, it's clear that Alastair Reynolds is a doctor of astronomy. As a new science fiction reader, Chasm City opened my eyes to how good it can be, albeit a departure from my usual reads. I give this book five stars out of five.
Great novel in a fantastic series!