4.5/5 stars This was great! Wonderful worldbuilding, interesting and distinct protagonist and a plot that kept me engaged from start to finish. I highly recommend the audiobook for this one: the narrator does a phenomenal job of voicing the characters in a way that brings their personalities to life even more, making for an even greater experience than this already was. I’ll be sure to pick up more of Tchaikovsky’s work in the near future.

This author's take on the dying Earth makes for a beautifully written and wildly inventive story that owes much to what has gone before including the Viriconium books, the works of Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe and even a touch of Michael Moorcock.Stefan Advani is a scholar with a rich history in the city of Shadrapur, the last city. The Sun is dying and the Earth has grown strange with forgotten technology, inscrutable super-intelligences and rampant evolution. We pick up Stefan's story after he's bee...

I picked this up fully expecting a wonderful Tchaikovsky. I've never gone wrong with him when it comes to his SF. The fantasy, well, is kinda so-so for me, but the SF is usually bang-on.This novel, however, started with a fun bang, slowly turned into a slightly interesting prison tale at the far end of time, and then just started reminding me of Senlin Ascends with a bit of Moorcock and even A. Reynolds thrown into the mix, and even some Dostoyevsky.The END was pretty awesome. All the little ran...

This was a three star read until the last third. This 600+ page book should have been a short story in my opinion.CONTENT WARNING: (view spoiler)[ body horror, torture, depravity, misogyny (often violent), medical experimentation, coercion of will. (hide spoiler)]Things that made me keep going:-Tone. Tchaikovsky has a very wry, British-humor sensibility and that's always appealing-The concepts. He seems fascinated with evolution and the idea of the Last Man, and this plays with those in an init...

This was … difficult to get through. If you need an image, think of an explorer making his or her way through dense jungle.The spirit of man was crushed by the distance between the stars.Like all men, stars die eventually. Our sun is such a star. And its time has almost come. Stefan Advani is in prison, on an island off of Shadropar, the last city on Earth. We‘re in the far future and the sun has gone red and bloated. Stefan is a somewhat unreliable narrator, certainly no hero, but stuff … just

Cage of souls is a dark and hypnotic sci-fi story with a strong eco message. It is set on a future and failing Earth, which is suffering as the sun is dying. The world building is fantastic, depicting an ecology outside of the last remaining city that has evolved in terrifying and threatening ways. The city itself is populated by people who remain within its walls, having given up on the natural world and are too preoccupied with status, materialism and exhausting the last of the Earth's resourc...

Written in the form of an imaginary memoir, Cage of Souls introduces us to Stefan Advani, an academic and a fairly ordinary man, not a hero by any means. The author quickly introduces us to Stefan's world - the planet in its dying stages, horribly polluted, with a fading sun and the population reduced to just one city, Shadrapur.In the course of the book Advani tells of different parts of his life, sometimes in his present time and sometimes in his past. We see his life spent in Shradrapur, in p...

2.5*Right in the middle.oh my god, finally! Is this a bad book? I wouldn't say so.This book was one of my anticipated books of 2019 and I am disappointed.After reading Children of Time (one of my favourites) and Dogs of War, I was really looking forward to read this book. I even pre-ordered it.Let's talk about the plot and the overall story (no spoilers, obviously). The idea for this story is so interesting: The sun is dying and humans are living in the last known city, Shadrapar. We start the b...

Awesome. Basically an epic Dungeons and Dragons scenario about climate change in the extreme far future? I would also describe it as China Mieville but without the big wanky words.

Brilliant! How in the world did this not win the Hugo and Nebula last year?! It has everything you could possibly want in a novel, even great literary merit. I think I've found a new writer whose entire oeuvre I'm going to read. This story takes place in a dark and distant future in which the Earth is so messed up that only a single city remains, surrounded by fecund jungle teeming with new (and often intelligent) life forms. The story is told a bit in the style of a Dickens novel by a scholar w...

This one was a weird read for me because it's standalone fantasy and often I find I enjoy series more. However, I picked this up as it's by Tchaikovsky who is one of my favourite authors, and I am very glad to have read it even though this particular book isn't my favourite by him. This story actually reminded me a little bit, at different times, of a fantasy of manners story, and also of the Tower of Babel series by Josiah Bancroft. I have to admit that I liked the Babel series more than this,

Adrian Tchaikovsky's Cage of Souls reminded me strongly of a 19th century exploration and adventure story from its opening pages. What was actually within its pages was a bleak and rather horrifying far future on earth, where humans live in the city of Shadrapur. It's a very long time from now, and Shadrapur is built upon countless other cities. The humans of Shadrapur have lost so much knowledge over the ages; many cannot read, and are confounded by what technology they do have; also, Shadrapur...

I am growing increasingly fond of Tchaikovsky's stories. This one is one of those that I consider the world as the main character. I shudder to think what Tchaikovsky would be like without being able to write down all of his ideas, Cage of Souls has enough for 3 or 4 novels. Unlike Sanderson, Tchaikovsky does not explain everything in detail, he throws a ton of elements out and then explores the ones he wants.We have (view spoiler)[ a mechanical floating island, mind control, futuristic tools an...

I don't know what to say except that this book is amazing.