Wow. This book is truly excellent.

I had found myself in a bit of a book funk, and picked up this large tome because Tchaikovsky has never let me down, and certainly didn't with this story. 

It's hard to describe this book, but I suppose the easiest way is to say it's a fictional memoir. Our narrator is a political prisoner, bound for The Island (an island jail no one returns from), and the story jumps from his experiences with the brutal Marshal and other prisoners, to his past memories in the last city on Earth, to his brief stint in the city's Underworld. This book has a lot to say about the way humans treat one another and the planet's resources, and Tchaikovsky crafts an incredibly engaging story throughout.