I read this right after The Prefect, and to me it’s the perfect follow-on novel. The absolute strangeness of Chasm City is magnificent. Though I normally prefer space operas that bounce from world to world spanning the galaxy in all its splendor, I love Chasm City. The city itself seems to be a character of its own. It’s especially interesting because I read this right after The Prefect, which takes place in the Glitter Band, which Chasm City was part of before the Melding Plague brought the whole band into ruin. This is a fantastic book that I’ve read and enjoyed multiple times.
Publisher’s Summary
Named one of the best novels of the year by both Locus and Science Fiction Chronicle, Alastair Reynolds’s debut Revelation Space redefined the space opera. With Chasm City, Reynolds invites you to reenter the bizarre universe of his imagination as he redefines Hell.
The once-utopian Chasm City – a domed human settlement on an otherwise inhospitable planet – has been overrun by a virus known as the Melding Plague, capable of infecting any body, organic or computerized. Now, with the entire city corrupted—from the people to the very buildings they inhabit—only the most wretched sort of existence remains. For security operative Tanner Mirabel, it is the landscape of nightmares through which he searches for a lowlife postmortal killer. But the stakes are raised when his search brings him face to face with a centuries-old atrocity that history would rather forget.