Steampunk sword-and-sorcery with insect-like humans

Empire in Black and Gold (Shadows of the Apt, #1)
by Adrian Tchaikovsky

First book in a series off 10 novels. It feels very much like epic fantasy, but it has many steampunk elements. Probably something to be expected from Tchaikovsky. We seem to move from a city state that feels very much like antique Greece to a very Dickensian city in the grasp of an industrial revolution to an enemy that I can‘t quite put my finger on yet. Persia? The Ottoman Empire? The build-up to WWII, if just anybody had listened? On the way we take a detour through Lord of the Rings territory. There seems to be a bit of everything.

People appear insect-like. There are ants, beetles, people with wings… Human-insect hybrids? The bad guys are wasp-like, organized and aggressive. And there are other „kinden“ around. Some are more mystical and dwell in the old times of sword-and-sorcery, others are Apt and have a knack for the mechanical. One wonders how this evolution came to pass.

In the first chapter we meed Stenwold, embroiled in a battle. He returns home and warns of the encroaching threat that nobody wants to hear about. So he makes his own plans. A mixed group of characters and „kinden“ are introduced and led along a plot that increases in tension. Eventually the characterizations are deepened, background is added and relationships develop. Nicely done. The enemy is made tangible as well by introducing a presumably bad guy with more than one dimension. There are various trials and tribulations for our main characters, that all converge in a climactic fight. 

Unfortunately there was another 200 pages after that and I really struggled to keep my momentum going. Another one of those needlessly overlong epic fantasies. I was pretty much done after the first 400 to 450 pages. I couldn‘t wait to finish the book—not because I found it so exciting, but because I needed it to be over. Saving grace: Tchaikovsky writes well, always has some unusual ideas and doesn‘t care about fitting into a specific genre.

The next book, Dragonfly Falling, is another 670 pages of dense and small print. I read the also pretty lengthy text on the back flap and then proceeded to read the blurbs of the other eight novels. Phew, I don‘t have the patience for that much drawn out epic fantasy. I tossed Dragonfly off my virtual TBR pile and put the paperback in my give-away basket. I doubt that I will ever struggle through all 10 books of this series.

Next: I will continue with The Immortality Thief (The Kystrom Chronicles, #1) by Taran Hunt and then return to Adrian Tchaikovsky with And Put Away Childish Things.

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