So far I’ve read four things by Tchaikovsky: a novel about climate change that pissed me off like no other; a novella about time travel that made me laugh like no other; a brilliant exploration of one of the most fundamental concepts of science fiction; and this, the first book of a Lovecraftian space opera. They’ve all been amazing. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Tchaikovsky’s bibliography includes steamy romance, a Szechuan cookbook, and an advanced quantum physics textbook. And I’d expect them all to be great.
The premise here is that, about 80 years or so before the beginning of this book, Earth was destroyed. Or not so much destroyed as … sculpted, by beings known as the Architects. They’re about the size of the Moon, appear without warning, and reshape planets into strange but clearly intentional shapes that humans can only call abstract art. (This is obviously a very, very bad thing if you happen to be living on the planet in question at the time.) No one knows what they are, where they come from, why they do this, or how. All attempts at communication failed; all attempts at resistance did as well. As far as humanity could tell, both attempted communication and attempted resistance weren’t even noticed. All you could do, when an Architect appeared, was evacuate as many people as possible (which was never enough). Billions died when Earth was attacked, and millions or hundreds of millions died every time an Architect appeared over one of humanity's colony worlds.
The Architect War (though to call it a "war" is a bit of a misnomer) ended when humanity created the Intermediaries, a kind of telepath that was able to connect to the vast minds of the Architects. The effect was rather like that of an ant jumping up and down to get a human's attention, but it worked. For the first time, the Architects became aware of humanity, and they … left. No explanation given, no communication attempted, they just left.
The book is set a few decades after the end of the Architect War. Humanity has been struggling to rebuild, and has fractured into rival nations. The chief protagonist is Idris, the Intermediary who successfully got the attention of an Architect. He’s been making a living as the navigator for a salvage crew operating on the fringes of human space (as a side effect of their engineering, the Intermediaries are able to navigate FTL off of established pathways). Things kick off when Solace, one of the Parthenons (a group of genetically engineered warrior women) (also his ex) shows up to recruit Idris to the Parthenon side in the intra-humanity jockeying for power. Things really kick off when Idris and his crew are sent to salvage a lost ship, and find it's been reshaped by an Architect - the first sign of them since they vanished.
The book is *xcellent. Idris and his crew mates are a mismatched but loyal group of outcasts and ne'er-do-wells that fans of Firefly and the Wayfarers books. The world building is solid, the aliens interesting, and the portrayal of a human society very much still suffering from collective trauma is wonderfully done. Very, very much looking forward to the next one.
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