Rating: 
Summary: could do with out atleast a hundred pages of this book
Review: Chasm City turns out to be an okay book in the last quarter if you are patient enough to reach there; I almost gave up after 100 pages or so b/c the plot is so ordinary and unengaging. What really irked me about this book is the fact that the author decided to explain every detail of the characters experience - the mechanics of every ship the characters board, every gun they shoot, so on. ... I give it one star only for the last quarter of the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Needs a *lot* of work
Review: Chasm City was a tough book for me to review, especially without spoilers. Let me say up front that this is the first book I have read by this particular author. The novel basically has two story lines, there is the Sky Haussmann storyline and the Tanner Mirabel storyline. I liked most of the Haussmann storyline although it did start to get weak towards the end. Overall the pacing of the book is sluggish. The author plods from one plot point to the next, never really building up momentium or tension about how things will work out in the end (more on this later). Like I said, I did like the Haussmann parts of the book for the most part. What I didn't like about the Tanner Mirabel storyline can be summed up as follows: Pace: most of the sluggishness of the book exists in the Tanner Mirabel part, although even the Haussmann part starts to slow down as the two plots start to merge in the last quarter of the book. The pace also comes across to me as choppy. We race from place to place never really seeming to accomplish much. There was more than one event in the book where I finished reading and thought "what was the point of that?". I assumed that these events would become important later in the story but they never really seemed to. Character development: Other than the main character, most of the people (and things) that we are introduced to are kept 2-dimensional. Even main characters that are crucial to the plot aren't really developed very well. Two of the characters that make it to the ending are kept so shallow that their personalities seemed to pretty much merge. I think they were meant to be "bookend" characters, personality-wise. By the end I couldn't really tell them apart. Telegraphing plot-twists: Reading this book I kept expecting to see a commercial for Western-Union, no joke. Every major plot twist is telegraphed well in advance. One plot point that I assume was supposed to be part of a "shocker" ending was pretty much spelled out about 230 pages in and believe me, I groaned when I read that particular passage. The rest of the "shocker" parts were also spelled out well before the ending. Remember when I mentioned building tension? It's hard to build tension when you insist on making the ending so painfully obvious halfway into the story. Deux Ex Machina: Every time our hero gets himself into a fix he pretty much has to rely on someone else to come along and save him. Now, if you read the book the hero is made out to be someone who would never have to rely on someone else. Eventually you have to wonder why. This would actually be my second example of telegraphing because once I noticed it the rest of the ending fell into place. The last couple of sections of the last chapter: Ick, ick, ick. There's nothing else to say. One of the lamest wrap-ups that I've seen in a long, long time. In conclusion, I give this book three stars. I'd give the Haussmann storyline maybe four stars on it's own. The rest of the book only deserves a one.
Rating: 
Summary: Reynold's Universe Rocks!!
Review: Chasm City, and the Revelation Space books, bring to life a universe, that is as rich, dark, and weird as the early Greg Bear novels. If you like your science fiction hard and fast, with rich characters, these books are for you. Reynolds somehow brings the tremendously long distances and time spans between stars up to the speed of heat in his "lighthuggers" (relativistic starships) in Revelation Space, and describes a culture that had great wealth in technology, and lost it in Chasm City. So, go find yourself an intelligent weapon of planetary destruction in your lighthugger weapons bay, get your mods implants, and get ready for some kick-ass gunnery training. Sci-Fi doesn't get much better than this.
Rating:
Summary: Dark and Disturbing
Review: Coming off of Reynolds's Revelation Space I was expecting quite a bit from this book...and while it wasn't quite up to Revelation Space's standards this book is still quite good...which is why I've given it five stars when ideally I'd like to have given it four-and-a-half. Set in the same Universe as Revelation Space this book switches back and forth quite well between Chasm City (and its orbiting environs), Sky's Edge, and the Flotilla launched to colonize Sky's Edge several centuries earlier. All three locales can be quite gritty and disturbing at times...offering up a range of unusual people/creatures/people-creatures. One unusual thing about this book is that, usually when I am finished with a book I look back on the characters and feel -- for lack of a better term -- the righteousness of the characters' actions...in this book that certainly wasn't there at its culmination. Which is not to say the characters don't progress, change, and evolve...they most certainly do. It is just that that evolution of character is quite different than what I'm used to. This unusual progress does not just take place with the main protagonist...it takes place with other characters, major and minor, as well. These unusual characters traverse through an often dark and disturbing world filled not only with unusual people/creatures/people-creatures but also a very dark, dank, smothering backdrop where one not only has to survive his enemies that may be pointing very unusual and lethal weapons at you, but also must survive the squalid backdrop surrounding everyone...whether you're the one holding the weapon or having the weapon pointed at you. Overall, while this book may not be quite up to Revelation Space's standards it is still a great read, with well-developed characters and unusual plotlines.
Rating: 
Summary: Read Revelation and Redemption First
Review: I discovered Alastair Reynolds by accident browsing in a bookstore. I ended up reading Revelation Space and then Redemption Ark before getting around to Chasm City. The best part of Mr. Reynold's work is that he weaves his back stories and plot development so that each book contributes to the whole. Several reviewers complained about plot points that were introduced but not explained or used to any conclusion, and I say to them, they will appear elsewhere in the writer's universe. I look forward to the concluding novel to the Revelation / Redemption trilogy. Certainly there we will discover more about Gideon and other Chasm City plot points. If you have enjoyed Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Stephen Baxter, Vernor Vinge and the like, you will undoubtedly enjoy these rich, exciting, page-turning novels.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining sophomore effort but rough around the edges.
Review: I enjoyed reading Chasm City. It's a fun and inventive tale of a future human settlement fallen on hard times, and a man who doesn't know his own mind. I will definitely continue to read Reynolds' books as they come out. Nevertheless, like Revelation Space, this novel has some narrative foibles that detract from its overall success. A first person viewpoint is justified by the story, but it causes the author some hangups when he has to relate information to the reader without making it clear whether the narrator is aware of the significance of what he sees. Then there is the extended diversion to visit Gideon (and, in flashback, the Calueche) that is of no importance to the development of the main story. The side trip ties in with Reynolds' overall worldbuilding and perhaps it will be important in the next novel, but here it sits like an undigested lump in the last third of the book. It's also never made clear how the man seen in the last chapter of the book (and why the pointless framing device in that chapter?) became so much greater than the sum of his parts, which one would have thought was the point of the entire tale. Neither of Reynolds' novels quite hold up to their promise, but both are worthy and worthwhile efforts.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time.
Review: I liked Revelation Space well enough, but I am a hard SF guy and Mr Reynolds apparently wants to move into fantasy - the buildings catch a disease and the society becomes wierd and pathological. I suspect he read China Miéville's Perdido Street Station one time too many. Then, there is the inconsistency of Tanner, the hard guy, being beaten up by a couple of monks, and a few pages later he is kicking the ... out of a professional thug with "a neck like my thigh". I tossed it in the trade-ins at about 100 pages.
Rating:
Summary: Better than the first, but still not good enough.
Review: I read Revelation Space, the author's first book, and although it was interesting, it seemed to take for ever to read, and when it was finished, I wasn't at all sure what I had read. This new book is easier to read and moves along much better, but still jumps around too much between different characters. I though it was billed as a sequel, but it actually has pratically nothing similar to the first book. I think this writer will eventually make the grade, but not yet.
Rating:
Summary: A fall from grace..almost
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed Revelation Space and was excited when this book, set in the same universe, came out. The book started out incredibly slow. I understand that it takes time to set up the plot, but come on. If it wasn't for the fact that I loved his first book I might have stopped reading this one after the first 200 pages. I was beginning to wonder if Mr. Reynolds was going to be a one hit wonder. Well the final 200 pages made up for the first 200. The action/plot moved much quicker which made for easy reading. I stayed up late to finish the last 50 pages, which the sign of a good ending. I gave this book 3 stars and the strong finish will probably convince me to read the next offering in this series. RFM
Rating:
Summary: What plague?
Review: I was seduced by the back cover's promise of a plague-infested world where "only the most wretched sort of existence remains." Instead of delivering on this promise, the author uses the plague only as an "explanation" for why the once technologically advanced inhabitants of Yellowstone now have to go about in Tarzan-like cable cars and even rickshaws. For all the talk of a plague, we only come face to face with a real victim only once! Furthermore, the "centuries-old atrocity that history would rather forget" is a real disappointment. The meat of this book is about the main character trying to recover his identity. With its introverted focus, everything going on around the character is mere sideshow. It is puzzling that with such a promising concept Reynolds chose to write a drama of the mind and little more.
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