It touches on colonialism and oppression, exploitation and subjugation, naive youthful fervor and cynical calculated greed. It’s not a place to see through any kind of rosy shades.
We can’t rely on the threat of force unless they know we will follow up on it.”
“We can’t bring perfection to the world without the threat of force. The city of Ilmar may be not as strange and beautifully ugly as Miéville’s New Crobuzon, but it’s decidedly unpleasant in a oddly fascinating way. There’s magic - it’s fantasy after all - but really it’s more of a veneer for the social divisions and bureaucratic oppression musings, and the city and tone at times reminded me of China Miéville minus the overuse of thesaurus. It’s odd and weird and a bit warped, and full of strange and often unlikable characters inhabiting a strange and decidedly unpleasant city that is teetering on the verge of major unrest, waiting for a tiny spark - a McGuffin, really - to set off a chain of disasters. It took me a little while to wrap my head and heart around the happenings in this one. For some reason it often takes me much longer to love Adrian Tchaikovsky’s fantasy offerings even though I tend to have love-at-first-sight affairs with his science fiction.
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