the City of the pit is a Romance of Science-fiction writes by Alastair Reynolds in 2001. It is the second novel of the Cycle of the Inhibiters.

Most of the novel is told with the first nobody by the character Tanner Mirabel, a bodyguard originating in Sky Edge come in the town of Chasm City on the planet Yellowstone to avenge death for the wife of its former customer Cahuela killed by noble the Argent Reivich.

It with the surprise to discover on its arrival on Yellowstone, the place where civilization is advanced history of humanity, that the system was struck by a virus called the Melting Pourriture. This virus attacks the machines equipped with a certain level of complexity. Chasm City, formerly forest of gigantic skyscrapers able to modify their form, was transformed into a deformed cluster of ruins. In the same way the Glitter Band , formerly a diaporama bursting of ten miles orbital habitats became the Ceinture of rust where a few hundreds of helped people of primitive machines survive.

Tanner Mirabel leaves in search its prey in this universe disorder and desolation, to discover that the motivations of Reivich are more complex than he had thought it. It is also more and more victim of the effects of a virus indoctritionel which revives to him in flashback moments of the life of Sky Haussmann, the admired and hated founder of its world of origin.

During its exploration of Chasm City, it starts to discover some more and more on the origin of the Melting Rot.

The Cycle of the Inhibiters

See also: Cycle of the Inhibiters

• the Space of the revelation

• the City of the pit
• the Arch of the redemption
• the Pit of the discharge