http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2022-05.html#wjw ( )

Questa edizione digitale ricompone questo romanzo “City on Fire” , uscito in Italia in due numeri separati di Urania (“Citta di Fuoco” e “La Città nell'Abisso”) che è stato candidato all'Hugo nel 1998. La grande città futura o "laterale" alimentata dall'energia del Plasma e descritta fin nei minimi dettagli da Walter Jon Williams è già nota ai lettori che ne hanno seguito la fondazione in Metropolitan. Ora, in Città di fuoco, è il momento di tornare a Caraqui.la città definitiva. Constantine e Aiah hanno rovesciato la corrotta amministrazione della città-pianeta e hanno preso il potere, ma per difendere il nuovo regime devono sconfiggere la minaccia della Mano d'Argento e infrangere la misteriosa barriera che separa la città dallo spazio. Il rischio maggiore sarà per Aiah, che deve prepararsi a un'impresa difficilissima, dopo aver sconfitto il cartello dei ladri di plasma dovrà neutralizzare un misterioso alleato capace di tramutarsi in un assassino altrettanto efficiente: quello che divora le sue vittime dall'interno

Metropolitan was a very good book; City on Fire is if anything even better. These are urban fantasy/science fantasy books on an epic scale. Yes, City on Fire gives us magic (of a dark, thaumatergical sort), but it also includes plenty of war, love, loyalty, treason, military strategy and tactics, insurgency, prejudice, politics, science, economics, academia, religion, the entertainment industry, naïve idealism, and Machiavellian scheming.

The atmosphere of the books remind me of China Mieville’s New Crobuzon books, but a bit less horrific. The setting is a planet (perhaps a distant future Earth) surrounded by an impervious shield of unremembered origin. The planet is covered by a single unending city, broken up into independent city states. The world’s energy source is plasm, a pseudoscientific force that inhabits all things, especially large masses of metal (kind of like Lucas' Force without the religious overtones).

Our protagonist is Aiah, a minor bureaucrat who in the first book discovers a substantial plasm source and decides NOT to simply turn it over to the government. The second book picks up in the aftermath of the great event that culminated the first book. Race and ethnicity play key roles in the story: Aiah is a Barkazil, an ethnic group recently displaced from their ancestral homeland, subject to frequent prejudice. The Barkazil philosophy of life boils down to “there are two types of people, those who are taken for a ride and those who do the taking.” Aiah really grows in City on Fire, declaring her moral independence from her lover Constantine, even as she works with him to achieve his political goals. Constantine is an idealist turned Machiavellian who seems prepared to make any sacrifice to achieve his very specific vision of a better future. Add to the mix Constantine’s other sometimes-lover-turned-ally, the brutally manipulative Sorya (whose philosophy of life is that “all truces are temporary”) and you have an intriguing trio pushing the action. These main characters are explicitly set up as almost mythological archetypes, in a way that is very directly explored in Aiah’s three visits to the Dreaming Sisters.

Williams has said that he eventually plans to write a third book to the series. I sure hope he does. ( )

http://www.sfreader.com/read_review.asp?ID=307 ( )