In the final instalment of the Tyrant Philosophers quintet, award-winning author Adrian Tchaikovsky takes us back to Ilmar, the 'City of Last Chances', a decade after our story began. Has the Palleseen campaign to impose 'perfection' on a chaotically magical world reached breaking point?
It's almost ten years since the Gownhall Rising, in which time the Palleseen grip on the city has only strengthened. Landmarks like the Mahanic Temple and even the Gownhall itself have been torn down to be replaced by Palleseen edifices. The Grove, gateway to the infinite wood and all the worlds beyond, is scheduled for destruction. Only the haunted Reproach remains too much for even the Pals to extinguish.
Istri is a playwright, writing plays contrary to perfection and keeping ahead of both the censors and her creditors. In a bad spot, she is commissioned by Fidel, the 'Old Owl' of the resistance, to write her last and greatest work. Innocent enough, except it is to be a play touching on the most forbidden topic, the Reproach itself.
Orlandt, soldier of fortune and Istri's former lover, has been over a decade away from the city since fleeing into the Grove to escape the Pal occupation. Now he's back, looking for familiar faces. But his past is always with him, what he did in the war, and what was done to him within the Wood.
Yasnic the ex-priest, the conjurer, the beloved of Hell, has come home to find his city under threat not just from the Palleseen, but other sinister sources. Meanwhile the factory demons are working to rule, the old Gownhall site has been occupied by a familiar band of foreign soldiers, and the Palleseen Commission is schisming into mutually-opposed factions whose squabbling has finally reached Ilmar.
As Palleseen control of the city fractures and the terrible details of Fidel's plan become clear, the destinies of all these disparate groups and individuals are set to collide in a war for the future of Ilmar, and of the whole Palleseen Sway.
