The Bear and the Serpent is book 2 of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Echoes of the Fall series. Maniye now has three shapes she can step into and, with the aid of her champion form, has learned to work with all of them. The power structures in the north are shifting and re-aligning and Maniye finds herself the leader of a warband of misfits and outcasts, amongst them her natural father Takes Iron. She doesn’t really know how to handle this or where she fits in, so she takes her band south with Asmander so he can fight in the civil war.

Meanwhile, Loud Thunder is trying to draw together all the peoples of the North to meet the threat that the world faces: the plague people, who have no animal souls, and the strange capacity to destroy the human side of person. Anyone who meets them or is struck by their bullets finds themselves trapped in their animal soul, unable to step and unable to communicate. There are more clues that the plague people are the peoples from the Shadows of the Apt series and I am fascinated to see how the two connect. Loud Thunder’s struggles with the representatives of all the tribes he has gathered together are undermined by his unrequited romantic obsession and his lack of confidence in himself. Eventually he overcomes his insecurities and leads the tribes in an attack that pushes the plague people back into the sea. It is done at great cost and with the sense that they will come back stronger and the tribes will not win next time.

There is a real danger that this blog is going to become an Adrian Tchaikovsky fansite. Once again, I found myself completely absorbed. This is a middle book in a series of three and often middle books don’t resolve anything in the story as they are busy setting up book three. In The Bear and the Serpent Asmander’s story is resolved. He finds a way between the twins at war that ends the conflict and faces up to his manipulative father. But the plague people are in the south too. The Bear and the Serpent is brilliantly balanced between telling a complete story within the novel and forming the middle act in a trilogy. It is very accomplished. I can’t wait to read book three.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is fast becoming my favourite author. In The Tiger and the Wolf, the first book of the Echoes of the Fall series, Maniye is a child born to two tribes and beloved of neither of them. In this world, all humans have a totem animal and can shift into that shape whenever they like. Some people are born to parents of different tribes and when they hit puberty have to choose one shape over the other. Maniye can’t choose. She tries to choose the Wolf because that is the tribe she was raised in, and she nearly succeeds, but when she passes the trial she learns her father sees her as his pawn in his war against the Tiger. Maniye flees. She finds the Tiger people, and her mother, whom she believed dead, but realises they are as cruel as the Wolf and she is no more accepted there than she had been in the Wolf tribe.

Most of the novel is a chase, with both the Tiger and the Wolf seeking to capture Maniye and her learning to use both shapes to evade them. Over time the souls within her war with each other and her ability to shift shapes becomes unstable. The wolf and the tiger cannot co-exist. In escaping, Maniye has met people from other tribes, some of which have Champion forms as well as their tribe totem. With the help of a priest of the Serpent, Maniye goes in search of a totem strong enough to hold the tiger and the wolf in check.

Over and above the chase story and Maniye’s coming of age story, The Tiger and the Wolf is a story of a world under threat from a great peril. In the legends of the tribes there are tales of the Plague People and how the tribes fled from one land to this one to avoid destruction. Maniye meets many people on her travels because the priests of the tribes are gathering to share their portents. All understand that something terrible is coming. None know what it is.

I loved this. The writing is great and the worldbuilding is exceptional. It is pretty dark. Few of the characters have redeeming features, many of them are at the mercy of their family and tribe and not free to choose how to act. There are betrayals and reversals and deaths of characters that shouldn’t die. And there is an enormous world-destroying threat coming but the tribes are caught up in their local rivalries and politics to lift their heads up and take notice. There’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere.

Last autumn I binge-read a ten book series, Shadows of the Apt, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This is highly unusual for me. I tend to prefer to read something different in between titles in the same series because otherwise I get fed up. In fact, the only other time I read books in a series consecutively is re-reads of A Song of Ice and Fire.

What I’m trying to say is, these books are good. Really, really good. To start with I loved the concept of the world. Humans are evolved from insects and retain characteristics of their parent insect. Some of these species are Apt, which means proficient with technology but insensitive to magic, and others are Inapt, not able to mentally grasp technology but possessed of magical power. A few species have a little of both. Each has an ability from their insect ancestor, perhaps flight, night-vision or a weapon. Within each species individuals are different. Some societies are more monolithic than others, but all have internal tensions.

Beyond that, it is a war story. A great sweeping tale encompassing many nations and peoples. It starts with Stenwold Maker, a college professor beetle in a Lowland city trying to convince his complacent compatriots that the Wasp Empire is not the profitable trading partner it appears but rather is bent on military conquest. He uses his student as a spy network, and it is through those characters that the story unfolds. Naturally, the wasps are evil. I was never sure if it was based on Nazi Germany, the Roman Empire, or the British Empire, and I expect elements of all three were present.

I enjoyed the exploration of the arms race in the books. The war swings back and forth. At first the wasps seem irresistible, then the clever beetles develop weapons that put the wasps on the back foot, but then the wasps come back with something even worse. The wasps are apt, but not especially mechanically-minded, but they have colonised peoples within their empire who are and they use those talents ruthlessly. In the later books, there is a thread of rebellion from within the empire and, rather realistically, some of the conquered people side with the oppressor. There are characters who develop weapons purely for the creative joy of it and sell them to all sides. I liked how there were many moments in the books when it felt impossible for the beetle cities of the Lowlands to survive, yet somehow they did.

The books also explore what people are willing to do in times of extremis. Some species use torture and others don’t, but all are confronted with the need to deal with traitors and spies and forced to face the consequences of their actions. Characters are complex and painted in shades of grey. No one is wholly noble and good, no one is one-dimensionally evil. Some people are swept along by their circumstances and others manage to steer their own courses at least a little.

There’s even room for a few love stories. You know, tragic ones where everyone dies. Well, almost everyone.

I couldn’t put them down while I was reading them. Compelling, thought-provoking stories. I highly recommend them. I fully intend to read everything Tchaikovsky writes which, given that he’s quite prolific, is already a substantial reading list.