Spoilers for Shards of Earth.
This was an excellent book, because that’s all Adrian Tchaikovsky writes. But it also left me extremely dissatisfied. It’s very much a middle book of a series; we get many more clues, but precious few answers.
Part of what frustrated me about this book is what I will call the “Mass Effect effect.” Why are all of these people so fixated on their petty politicking when there are literal world-destroying monsters running around? I know it’s very much human nature, but I still wanted to take a bunch of these people and bonk their heads together until they got some perspective.
Suffice it to say, humanity isn’t exactly banding together in the face of the return of the Architects.
This story picks up right where Shards of Earth left off, with Idris and the rest of the crew of the Vulture God with the Parthenon, helping them begin their own Intermediary program. The politics start up right away; Idris is very much setting the stage for an intra-humanity power struggle here. Meanwhile the Hiver Assembly is also involved, and Agent Mundy & Mordant House and other parts of the Council of Human Interest are each playing their own game, and who the hell knows what the Hegemony is up to (to say nothing of the Unspeakable Aklu, the Razor and the Hook).
It’s exciting, fast-paced, and well-written, because Tchaikovsky doesn’t write bad books. But I also didn’t get many answers to the questions I really wanted to know. What’s up with Architects? What’s driving them? What’s the thing watching in unspace? Who were the Originators? Where did they go? I know more about all of these things, but I don’t know enough about any of them. So all there is to do, I suppose, is read book 3 when it comes out. Hopefully very soon.
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