By Adrian Tchaikovsky
Empire In Black And Gold, book one of the Shadows Of The Apt series, was an impressive and memorable debut and one of my favourite fantasy reads of last year and so I set about this, the second book, with great excitement and it doesn’t disappoint.
We pick up the story just about where we left off with Totho, Salma and Skrill outside of the Ant city of Tark, spying on the Wasp army as they prepare to lay siege to it. After a misunderstanding with an Ant patrol they eventually end up inside Tark, preparing to defend the City as the Wasp attack begins. Meanwhile Stenwold has returned to Collegium to try and rally the city council to defend itself, and several of his spies have set off for different cities trying to persuade them to put aside their prejudices and join forces to defend the Lowlands from the inevitable Wasp onslaught. Back at the Imperial city of Capitas, the Wasp Emperor holds one of the few remaining Mosquito-kinden, the mysterious Uctebri, who claims he can give the young emperor the gift of immortality once he has been reunited with an ancient box of immense power and with sacrifice of his young Sister.
With all the groundwork laid so well in book one, book two leaps straight into the action and rarely lets-up for the entire of it’s almost 700 page length, and while the scale of book one was big, the story has now become nothing less than epic. The insect-kinden races that we were introduced to previously are all there but as the plot grows you get deeper insight into their cultures, and the politics and power-plays that drive their actions become both clearer and more complex though it is to Tchaikovsky’s credit that the story never feels bogged down because the conceit of his world constantly opens it up to invention and there is always something new to add to the pot albeit within strictly defined parameters.
The already large cast of characters are all there, Stenwold, Tisamon, Tynisa, Cheerwell and so on but inevitably some are busier than others and a few of the main cast of the first book are relegated to bit-part players in this one but then, there is a war on, and enough new, and often more interesting, ones turn up to keep you engaged. Amongst the best of these are Drephos, Colonel-Auxillian of the Wasp army, a halfbreed warrior-slave and master artificer who has spent his years perfecting the technology that drives the Wasps relentless march and Felise Mienn, a formidable swordswoman, scouring the lands looking for vengeance on the Wasp Colonel, Thalric.
Inevitably, as it must, the war begins in earnest and it is the great sieges and colossal battle scenes that really amp this story up to the next level. Visceral and immediate, the fighting draws you in with the excitement of new takes on familiar tactics, troops that often have the ability to fly, the silent and highly organised hive-mind of the Ants and the Beetle-kinden bringing out the best that their artificer technology can create, new flying machines, submersibles and powerful artillery, but it is tempered at the last when the aftermath of battle reveals the chaos and horror of war and you realise that no character – not even your favourites – are immortal.
Reminiscent of much that’s gone before from the likes of Gemmel, Erikson, Sanderson and Cook but with its own unique and clever touch, this is another terrific outing from Mr. Tchaikovsky and a worthy sequel in this epic saga. It’s clear also that this is a story that will not be wrapped up in one more book and so book three, ‘Blood of the Mantis’ has a lot to live up to but I, for one, wait with baited breath.
Dragonfly Falling is published by Tor through Pan Macmillan and is available from Play.com, Blackwell and all good bookstores.
Adrian Tchaikovsky maintains the all-important blog which you can read here and there is a website to accompany the series here.
SCI-FI-LONDON recently interviewed Adrian Tchaikovsky about the series, you can watch that interview here.