City at the End of Time by Greg Bear

CONTEMPORARY humans with novel powers, connected through dreams to fabulous creatures living in the universe’s last surviving city – a city besieged by encroaching “Chaos” and threatened by the end of time itself.

It sounds promising, and for the first half of this book Greg Bear weaves several story strands into a gripping, original tale. The key characters are “fate-shifters”, able to select which “fate lines” to travel, and to discard universes in which ill-fortune awaits. Bear’s visualisation of this talent is nothing short of brilliant.

But then he seems to lose focus. He throws in too many ideas, images, mythologies and distractions. Too many invented words are not explained, and thin characterisation and inexplicable motivations compound the problems. It started so well, but whips itself up into a virtually incomprehensible final act.

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