Acclaimed space opera writer Alastair Reynolds returns, to the world of Revelation Space with this British Science Fiction Award-winning stand-alone novel about a young man hell-bent on revenge, on the surface of a corrupted planet.
The once-utopian Chasm City 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 low-life killer. But the stakes are raised when his search brings him face-to-face with a centuries-old atrocity that history would rather forget.
"Deep, complex, and always more than [it] seems. Reynolds succeeds in the hardest task of good science fiction, creating a new world full of wonder."
- DENVER POST
"[A] worthy follow-up to... Revelation Space.... Reynolds transmutes space opera into a noirish, baroque, picaresque mystery tale.... Inventiveness and tone are Reynolds's strong points.... The novel's details are consistently startling but convincing in context.... Reynolds remains one of the hottest new SF writers around."
- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (STARRED REVIEW)
"Successfully combines SF noir with technothriller in a dark vision of the future." - LIBRARY JOURNAL
"[An] impressive book.... Another step toward what could become a very significant twenty-first-century hard SF career." - SF SITE