 Hello, hello, hello, folks! I'm Philip Magnus and today I will be talking about a book I'm very excited about Shards of Words by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I had the pleasure to read it thanks to Ned Gully and I am taking part in an ultimate blog tour very, very soon, but this isn't that post, this is my review. The post itself you will see on my blog the grimoire reliquary and it will be all about, I hope, tropes. Tropes in Shards of Words. But let's jump into the review itself. Shards of Words is Adrian Tchaikovsky's first bona fide attempt at the space opera the opening to his final architecture trilogy and one of the best science fiction books I've read this year Tchaikovsky's ambitions for this series are made clear very early on. Shards opens with a story of cosmic struggle against an enemy so vast even humanity's most advanced weaponry. There's no more than pimp rig them. The architects are I quote moon-sized entities that can reshape populated planets and ships as per the glossary into crystalline sculptures of staggering and repulsive beauty. These cosmic levitons are utterly unaware of the uncountable lives snuffed out in the process of the transformations they induce. The first world targeted by the staggering intelligences is none other than Earth. And Tchaikovsky's future version of humanity is often from its cradle which has turned it into little more than a confederation loosely held together by multiple factions who all have varying interests under the name Hugh which stands short for the Council of Human Interests. By the time the crux of this narrative picks up. 40 years have passed since intermediary Idris and two of his siblings at last managed to make contact with one of the architects and so have bought humanity a reprieve. The issue here is that no one quite knows how long this reprieve will last. This very same Idris working now as navigator atop a shabby vessel by the name of the Vulture God makes the deep space discovery a vessel that has gone through the same crystallization process as so many of humanity's central worlds did in that great war. The discovery sets off a series of events that affect, as you will imagine, forces far outside the Vulture's crew. While this is an over simplification of one main thread of the narrative, Tchaikovsky tells a far more intricate story. By the point the Vulture makes its discovery, the ship's crew has picked up a new recruit, point of view characters Solace, a mermaid and executor of the Partenny, the genetically engineered sisterhood of humanity, battle angels sworn to the defence of human space and the most militarily advanced strand of humankind. The nation of Partenon is composed of Partenon genetically grown women who are considered by their creator to be an ideal version of humanity. For that very reason, they are feared by much of their non-beo-engineered cousins, especially by the nativist faction and their extremist subgroup, the Betrayed. The nativist you might think of as far right and the Betrayed you, well, you might think of as far, far worse. During the Great War all of humanity was held together by the common threat of the architects. Forty years later, fractures between the two strands of humanity have widened to the point that tensions might give way to open war at the least provocation. The Partenon's one great disadvantage is that they lack intermediaries of their own, those capable of travelling outside the true ways and into deep space at a faster than light speed. Solace has a history with Idris from all the way back in the war when the int was her responsibility to look after. Pulled into active duty from cryosleep, she's been sent to make Idris an offer, one he may not be able to refuse. Here's the essence of Partenon as described by Solace himself. I know that in the colonies they say a lot of things about Idris, but I don't know how to describe it. I don't know how to describe it, but I don't know how to describe it, but I don't know how to describe it. Described by Solace himself. I know that in the colonies they say a lot of things about my people. I've seen the Hugh propaganda too, where war mongers, where man haters, where unnatural, born in a lab indoctrinated, programmed like machines. All that I've heard. Nobody remembers we died for the colonies above a hundred worlds during the war. We were the line. And the softer edges of her voice were ablating off, revealing only steel beneath. Idris belatedly remembered this wasn't just third generation ancestral pride, Solace had been there. She had fought in the war, faced the architects. We were the shields and swords of the colonies the Partenon went on. And then, when the war was over, you started asking why we had to keep on being different to you. Why couldn't we just come back and be your wives and daughters again? You really think we quit Hugh because we had some designs on your planet? Because we wanted to line all your menfolk up against a wall and make everyone else like us? We left because you hated us and would have used your laws to break us if we'd stayed. All we ever did was put our lives on the line for you. And you still hate us for it. After our quotes like this, I bet at least a few of you know if Charles Avert will work for you. But you see, I haven't even mentioned the FTL travel. In true space or profession, it is a common occurrence. Tchaikovsky uses the concept of unspace to have the races of his galaxy cut through vast swaths of cosmic space. Staying away during warges through unspace holds dangers all its own. For anyone who has braved it feels an uncanny presence seeking, searching to close the distance. There's something of Warhammer 40K's warp, there's something Lovecraftian too. Presented in such a way as to be novel rather than tired. The explanations that this is a shared experience triggered by the staggering loneliness at play here. And I say loneliness because whenever a ship full of people transitions in unspace, what every single person who is not asleep basically in pods, what every single one of these people experiences is this incredible feeling of being alone. When you're in unspace, no matter whether you were crowded with people before or not, you are all of a sudden alone. Everyone is sort of in a different instance. And as you might imagine, this experience which some in the book world would describe as hallucinogenic nature brings very false indeed as we will see in this quote. The fact that everyone who came out of unspace sane and hell reported the same delusion was not a comfort. Because Chris couldn't stop thinking. Surely there was only one logical explanation to everyone having the same experience that despite everything there really was something out there. Unspace had a single and inimitable denizen and she was trapped in here with it. Now I can almost hear the strings of a horror thwarted plane somewhere in the background as I read these lines. Humanity is however far from alone. Rather it is part of a bustling galactic community, which is often enough at odds. In addition to the strands of humanity and the hue and pattern and control, there's the hegemony. A much older civilization controlled by the inscrutable Eziel, possessing the knowledge to protect worlds from the architect's transformative touch. The Eziel seek to expand their control over humanity, but they're unwilling to do so through their strengthened arms, electing instead to persuade through the promise of safety and harmony. We never see a proper Eziel controlled world, but the hegemony's culture promises to be a starkly different one, compared with the bustling, staggering multitudes humanity has to offer. There's also the hypers, autonomous distributed artificial intelligences, created by humanity but now with distinct goals and interests of their own. The unkillable killing machines that are the Tosiat, the crowd like Hanylambra or Honey, Aliens, and several others I won't get further into. I reserve a special place for the originators however. An ancient space-faring race responsible for the true ways, as well as fascinating artifacts and ruins whose every mention and exploration fed me some serious nostalgia from my adventuring days aboard Mass Effect's Normandy. Plenty of that if you are a space opera fan. Shards of Earth recalls the very best of the genre, makes familiar tropes fresh and new, and folds in nicely next to other works by the author. I've seen Tchaikovsky deal with some of the teams touched in Shards of Earth before. The vast intelligences that find it difficult even to acknowledge human existence reared their attractive heads, I suppose, in the doors of Eden. Further, both the dangers of capitalism pushed to 11, as well as the possibility of distributed intelligence networks growing far more complex than intended requiring personhood made for the thesis statements of Dogs of War. The book's characters are ridiculously easy to root for. In addition to Idris and Solace, we've got Chris Salmere, a lawyer as deadly with a knife as she is with her words, Oly Timo, a mechanic and specialist whose ingenious use of robotics allows her to overcome physical disabilities and the Vulture God's captain, Rollo Rostand, whose dialect has a number of peculiarities which define space's speech in ways that read across as a natural drift away from our own use of language. It's not quite the belter lord speak from the expanse, but it has a ring to it, a rhythm which I found very pleasing. Perhaps not everyone will, you know, will react in different ways when it comes to our reactions to made-up languages or to shifts in the language we use in SFF literature, but for me it was an excellent, excellent addition. There are a few others. An alien, a hyphen, and the crew dynamics between them, are exactly what you'd hope they would be. They feel like a family, even when they're at each other's throats. Whether the focus is on Oly and Solace's very different understandings of what the part any way of life entails, the bond between Solace and Idris, neither of whom looked to have aged a single day since the time of the Architect War 40 years ago, or Chris's clever tongue lashing which might be aimed at just about everyone, inside and outside, the confines of the Vulture God, these characters work together perfectly. If you grew up with Star Wars or Star Trek, they'll feel like home, reminiscent of the Cruise of the Millennium Falcon and the Enterprise. As well as Firefly, Firefly would be another good example, it might actually be the closest one. The dangers of this galaxy go far beyond the Civilization Ending Tread of the Architects, from a rogue Essiel to a nobleman from one of humanity's most prosperous worlds to a secretive operator of Hughes Intelligence Service, Mordent House. The threats to the Vulture God's crew come in many different shapes and sizes. The dangers of this galaxy go far beyond the Civilization Ending Tread of the Architects, from a rogue Essiel to a nobleman from one of humanity's most prosperous worlds to a secretive operator of Hughes Intelligence Service, Mordent House. The threats to the Vulture God's crew are numerous and multifaceted. Action scenes are written with a precision I envy, often shocked with the suddenness and brutality and engender in the reader a sense of danger for everyone involved. I recall a point early on when I realized just how high the stakes were. And the words that made me do so also made me do a double take. They're still burnt in my mind, I can immediately recall them, but I'm not going to because they are very, very spot on heavy. The environs, different planets, the crew is trust between the majestic ships and the crappy space stations are all memorable. Here is an excellent description that showcases some of my favorite features of Tchaikovsky's writing. Jericho was the last habitable world to be found by explorers from Earth before there was no longer an Earth to be from. A survey team exploring a dead-end true way burst into a version system. They found a planet a little closer than Earth to a slightly cooler than Earth's. Then they found a biosphere crammed full of a writer's life, whose biochemistry overlapped with Earth by at least 40%. An Eden survey this crowd. Then the planet's biochemistry ate two of the landing party and they quickly revised their estimate to a monstrous deathworld. But there were still scientific grants for that. In a permanent research presence was established only months before an architect appeared over the skies of Earth. That research team was intended to be the sole presence on Jericho, an opportunity to conduct pure research into a thriving alien ecology untouched by humanity saved the nutless surveyors. Then Earth fell, the Polyospora began and Jericho received its shipments of refugees, same as everywhere else. Establishing a colony on planet was not the nature read in Toots and Claw experience everyone had expected. Desperate humans in need of a home could Toots and Claw ride back, and twice as hard. The clarity of description, the rye wit. I can't describe to you how many times I've cackled hysterically as some passage or another in Charles Avert. Allow me to point out also that I love books that park glossary at the end. This one has a timeline slapped at the very back of the glossary as well which makes for some encyclopaedical reading, preferably after you've finished the novel itself. I loved getting most of this information through dialogue, description and voice. Seeing it then presented chronologically makes for an excellent reference tool for later. Edwin Tchaikovsky shows a craftsman's care and a visionary's imagination in constructing this universe. He does so while rounding up the first part of this trilogy in such a way as to make it a gratifying experience that doesn't frustrate you to no end for not having the second book immediately at hand. You should get this one if you love the genre and if you're a newcomer curious about space opera or sci-fi overall this is a phenomenal title to start your interstellar journey wit. Now be honest with me, do you want me to tell you more about Charles Avert? I'd be happy to take a look at one of my favourite fight scenes. I could do a character profile or two, I could present even a spoiler discussion and if you're a fellow YouTuber or rather a booktuber who would like to take part in that let me know. What do you feel like? Tell me in the comments and don't forget to like this video, share it with your friends and press the subscribe button, ring the bell for notifications and I will see you again next time. Philip Magnus out, bye!