City of Last Chances is a book I like a lot in concept. Following a city currently oppressed by an occupying force, it follows a variety of characters from different aspects of society as they teeter on the edge of a rebellion. There is the last priest of a dying religion that can see his god, a group of students with idealistic visions, smugglers, factory workers, the old noble families of the city, a criminal organization, a pawnbroker, and so on. Each of these characters has a different reason for wanting to rebel as well as a different vision for the future. Some groups view it as an opportunity, others see it as futile, and others are not so sure oppression ends when the occupying force leaves since they were subject to it before. All of this is fascinating on a thematic level, and there are lots of interesting tangentially related questions, such as the cost of action versus inaction. On top of everything, Tchaikovsky lights a spark, leading to a sequence of events that end up involving all of these players. Throughout it all, there are also a variety of unique fantasy elements like a mysterious forest that transports people to other worlds and a zone within the city filled with horrors. All of this sounds great to me. The problem is that this is a 500-page book. It feels sprawling, and as soon as I started to get into a particular philosophical, political, or narrative thread, something new would be introduced that completely distracted me. I think the book sometimes goes 10 chapters without returning to an earlier POV, and throughout new characters continue to be introduced alongside a bunch of subplots that sometimes feel very isolated from the main narrative. The end result is a book that might paint a portrait about a city and the starting embers of revolution but still feels incredibly disjointed. I would like to highlight that I also struggled with the narrator of the audiobook, who would take very unnaratural pauses throughout, making it even harder for me to immerse myself. The disjointed nature of the book coupled with the weaker narration made me struggle with the page-by-page execution even if I loved the concepts. Plus, like with any other multi-POV fantasy book, I had the perspectives that I enjoyed and those that I did not, which wasn't great when there was no telling when a POV would return (if at all). Overall, I think this book is ambitious and doing some interesting things, but I wasn't very engaged when actually reading it.