I read The City of Last Chances last year and while I was keen to write a review, I sort of missed the point where it was the right time to do so. For those who haven't read it, it is an interesting point to dive into Tchaikovsky's fantasy writing as it is a wholly new setting and written with more sophistication than his early novels. If you've read his early fantasy work you'll recognise a lot elements in that novel: an expanding empire, a complex city under occupation, academic and student characters and a layered approach to magic with both more day-to-day system-based magic and more ethereal/supernatural/chaotic magic.
Where The City of Last Chances was quite different was in building the plot out of a series of vignettes and character studies that then build into a broader plot about an attempted insurrection. Imagine a cross between a later Pratchett novel and the TV series Andor and some China Miéville but with Tchaikovsky's own interests (there is one monstrous centipede). The structure means it is a slower novel to get into but also a very rewarding one.
The City of Last Chances does not have a protagonist as such but the hapless priest Yasnic, the sole worshipper of a diminutive god known only as "God" (a literal character in themselves, in the audiobook God is a tiny cantankerous Scotsman) is a common thread between the various criminals, students, revolutionaries, union-organisers and semi-magical beings.
The House of Open Wounds picks up on Yasnic's story after the events of The City of Last Chances. Yasnic has once again been arrested by the Pallaseen, the brutal empire that is attempting to enforce a constraining philosophy of order upon the world. However, rather than being sent to the dungeons, Yasnic is dragooned into the Pallaseen army to work as a medical orderly. There he finds himself in an unusual field hospital near the frontline of one of their many wars.
The Pallaseen have a difficult relationship with magic. Some forms are not just permitted but embraced, anything rule-based and systematic. Magic that tends towards the chaotic or which implies forbidden belief systems is broadly suprressed but the army has its own needs. Yasnic is placed in a special unit which uses magical practices generally frowned upon in wider Pallaseen society (mainly because it comes from "inferior" cultures) to heal soldiers — which is a particular problem for Yasnic because he has no special powers to heal anybody but his bad tempered God does.
Yasnic soon finds himself bereft of his name ("Jack" is easier for his comrades to say) and trapped in a hellish conflict that is part mechanised warfare and is part a conflict of necromancy and demonic beings.
Partly because the broader setting is already established and partly because the story has an initially clearer focus, The House of Open Wounds is a much quicker novel to get into. Yasnic/Jack role is more clearly that of a central character but the disparate team in the field hospital each have their moments. The story still has that feel of a Pratchett/Miéville mash-up where fantasy can play a role as social commentary but this time with dollop of M*A*S*H added in or the war-as-a-brutal-absurdity of fiction such as Catch 22 or The Good Soldier Švejk.
I'm only partway through and I'm still not sure where the ultimate direction of the plot is going. With The City of Last Chances, it took a long time to see how all the pieces would fit together but it was also clear that everything was heading towards a city-wide uprising. Here, the suite of characters are all connected by a common purpose (survive the war, heal the sick) but the arc of the plot is more ambiguous.
You could just about read this novel without reading The City of Last Chance. Yasnic and his god are the only common characters (so far) but it might be an effort to grasp the variety of fantasy elements already thrown into the pot (including demons, portals to other realities, fae-like beings, and vestigial but still potent gods). I'd recommend The City of Last Chances first but it is a novel that you need to stick with initially before you get into the rhythm of it. If you are a fan of Tchaikovsky's science fiction (or if you hate it), I'd say that the overall tone and approach of his fantasy work is sufficiently different that it is more than possible to love one but not the other and vice versa. I am enjoying both and currently he doesn't seem to be slowing down on the number of novels he is producing.
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