City of Last Chances

By Adrian Tchaikovsky

First edition, first impression, the trade issue: London: Head of Zeus, an Ad Astra book, 2022. Signed by the author to the title page.

Octavo. Original red cloth, the spine lettered in gilt beneath a gilt device of a bird. Dust jacket illustrated by Joe Wilson, unclipped and priced £20.

A fine copy, but for a couple of extremely shallow indentations to the lower board: the binding square and tight, the gilt bright, and the contents clean and unmarked throughout.

The original and unclipped dust jacket near fine, bright and unrubbed, with some wear to the spine head.

The first volume in the Tyrant Philosophers series, and winner of the 2022 British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel, announced at Eastercon in April 2023. Ilmar — City of Long Shadows, City of Bad Decisions, City of Last Chances — labours under the Palleseen occupation, its criminal underworld, its factory owners, its wretched poor and an ancient curse; the catalyst, as the jacket has it, 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 series has continued, and was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2025. Tchaikovsky had already taken the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Children of Time in 2016.