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. Langrice: owner/barkeep of the Anchorage, the tavern with some sort of connection to the Anchorwood The story is set in the city of Ilmar which has been colonised by the Palleseen, a race who believe their way of life is the correct one. They have outlawed the old religions and placed new laws to bring every citizen under one rule, but behind the scenes a revolution is brewing. Then there is the Anchorwood, a place that holds portals to other worlds but also inhabits monsters to stop you getting out. 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. A thank you to Cassie Waters from Head of Zeus for inviting us aboard the book tour for The City of Lost Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky. While she kindly provided an arc of the title, this review and my thoughts are my own.

Picture a city under occupation and on the verge of revolution. Imagine the streets teeming with discontent and bubbling with anger. Delve into each shadowed alcove and underground lair to discern who will light the first match and set fire to the masses, urging them to overrule the Palleseen regime.A wonderful twisty stew of a book with a cast of fascinating characters, set against the brilliantly realized city of Ilmar.' Django Wexler

We witness happenings that relate to the criminal underworld, academia, workers and demons, refugees and outsiders, forgotten gods, and magical artefacts from a wide range of perspectives. Ilmar is the novel's main character though, and this includes distinct and atmospheric areas such as The Reproach, The Hammer Districts, and The Anchorage. I found The Reproach to be a haunting and intensely interesting part of the city and I adored my time reading about that area and its inhabitants most of all. Tchaikovsky's prose is a thing of beauty. It's dense but managed to transport me in the setting. The action scenes, the magical horror scenes and the richness of the inhabitants of this world left me many times in awe. He's clearly an author with a very rich imagination and very talented with words. Structure is not often the thing that I highlight when discussing fantasy novels, but Tchaikovsky has created a genuinely different take than I have read before. The book starts with a few characters being introduced, but then you start to realise that the chapters keep moving on to new people. We are told the story of Ilmar, not from the perspective of the individual, but the city as a whole. It is like Tchaikovsky has a beam that focuses on one person and then leaps across the city to another, always moving on to the next location with each new chapter. 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. The plot is complicated but not overly so, and takes some unexpected twists and turns even beyond the way you’re never sure what someone will do thanks to the aforementioned tensions and ambitions. It does move slowly, especially during the first half or so of the novel, partially because so many characters need to be introduced, and the structure — multiple points of view moving serially one to the other — slows pace a bit as well thanks to the sheer number. I confess at times I felt I was making little forward progress, though I never considered giving up. Finally for the positives, the prose is sharp and vivid and a good match for the fertile creativity of the plot and world-building.We witness happenings that relate to the criminal underworld, academia, workers and demons, refugees and outsiders, forgotten gods, and magical artefacts from a wide range of perspectives. Ilmar is the novel’s main character though, and this includes distinct and atmospheric areas such as The Reproach, The Hammer Districts, and The Anchorage. I found The Reproach to be a haunting and intensely interesting part of the city and I adored my time reading about that area and its inhabitants most of all. 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. There has always been a darkness to Ilmar, but never more so than now. The city chafes under the heavy hand of the Palleseen occupation, the choke-hold of its criminal underworld, the boot of its factory owners, the weight of its wretched poor and the burden of its ancient curse.