A review by glasstatterdemalion
Faction Paradox: Of the City of the Saved... by Philip Purser-Hallard
4.0
Of the City of the Saved... is a phenomenal novel, doubly so for being the first novel by the writer, Philip Purser-Hallard.
The novel takes place in a city at the end of the universe where all lifeforms containing human DNA, from the earliest caveman to the last post-human, is reborn. Everyone is impervious to damage and immortal in The City of the Saved, which makes the murder that occurred that much harder to figure out.
The murder mystery drives most of the plot, with a web of characters and events that the novel jumps between in order to explore what's going on. These other POV's are some of my favorite parts, as the writing changes to reflect the how every character thinks (i.e. different slang in the narration, a running sword-and-sorcery-style pulp narrator, broken syntax, etc.).
The book is juggling a lot of ideas at once, and I don't really feel it drops any of them. There's ideas here about the interactions of different cultures and their inhabitants, themes about cultural stagnation (a point I've noticed in the last few Faction Paradox books as well), and one that becomes more and more relevant as the novel carries on, which is the relationship between parents and their children, both figuratively and literally. It's a lot in one novel but it works together, and each builds off of each other throughout the book.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a good read. There's some elements that might go over your head at first if you aren't well-versed in Faction Paradox/Eighth Doctor Adventures lore, but I feel the novel does a good enough job giving you everything you need to follow along.
The novel takes place in a city at the end of the universe where all lifeforms containing human DNA, from the earliest caveman to the last post-human, is reborn. Everyone is impervious to damage and immortal in The City of the Saved, which makes the murder that occurred that much harder to figure out.
The murder mystery drives most of the plot, with a web of characters and events that the novel jumps between in order to explore what's going on. These other POV's are some of my favorite parts, as the writing changes to reflect the how every character thinks (i.e. different slang in the narration, a running sword-and-sorcery-style pulp narrator, broken syntax, etc.).
The book is juggling a lot of ideas at once, and I don't really feel it drops any of them. There's ideas here about the interactions of different cultures and their inhabitants, themes about cultural stagnation (a point I've noticed in the last few Faction Paradox books as well), and one that becomes more and more relevant as the novel carries on, which is the relationship between parents and their children, both figuratively and literally. It's a lot in one novel but it works together, and each builds off of each other throughout the book.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a good read. There's some elements that might go over your head at first if you aren't well-versed in Faction Paradox/Eighth Doctor Adventures lore, but I feel the novel does a good enough job giving you everything you need to follow along.