He had to start thinking in terms of a seven-day week, except then he couldn’t look back on the way things had been and quantify the time properly. The School of Correct Exchange was levying fines and making arrests for people using the old calendar, he’d heard. Back when Ilmar had been a more tolerant place, and old Kosha and Yasnic and God had lived in three rooms above a tanner’s and had meat at least once a twelveday. He gave thanks, his knee-jerk reaction ingrained from long years of good upbringing from Kosha, the previous priest of God. Sometimes Yasnic could do with a little less God in his life, and here he was this morning, and God was smaller by at least a quarter. He had shrunk since the night before, and perhaps that, too, was a blessing.

“It’s so cold.” The divine presence was curled up on His shelf like an emaciated cat, and about the same size. If he’d been able to afford anything larger, then he’d have needed a hearth and to buy wood or coal, or even magical tablethi, to heat the place. He could have put a foot out and kicked out at God. He could have put a hand out to touch the panes and check. Trying to tell from the way the light filtered in through the filthy window whether the frost was just on the outside, or on the inside again. Yasnic lay crunched up in bed, knees almost to his chin and his feet twined together. Here’s the full cover, followed by the excerpt. Ilmar, some say, is the worst place in the world and the gateway to a thousand worse places. What will be the spark that lights the conflagration?ĭespite the city’s refugees, wanderers, murderers, madmen, fanatics and thieves, the catalyst, as always, will be the Anchorwood – that dark grove of trees, that primeval remnant, that portal, when the moon is full, to strange and distant shores. 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. There has always been a darkness to Ilmar, but never more so than now. He returns to the fantasy genre with his next novel, City of Last Chances, and Gizmodo has a first look today!

Clarke Award in 2016 for his sci-fi tale Children of Time, but he’s equally as well known for his Shadows of the Apt fantasy series. Versatile and prolific author Adrian Tchaikovsky won the Arthur C.

Adrian tchaikovsky city of last chances