Book Review: Heirs of the Blade, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Book seven in the Shadows of the Apt series.
Tor Books, 2012, 622 pages
The greatest foe is the enemy within....
Tynisa is on the run, but she cannot escape the demons of her own mind. Amidst the fragmenting provinces of the Dragonfly Commonweal, her past will at last catch up with her. Her father's ghost is hunting her down.
At the same time, the Wasp Empire seeks to conquer the city of Khanaphes, the fallen jewel of the ancient world. Whilst Empress Seda's soldiers seek only conquest and prestige, she sees herself as the heir to all the old powers of history, and has her eyes on a far greater prize.
Spoilers for earlier books in the series.
I'm seven books deep into this ten-book series, and still enjoying it greatly. Heirs of the Blade was better than the previous book, The Sea Watch, which was fun but felt like Tchaikovsky writing a splatbook about the Sea Kinden in another part of the world.
This is a multi-POV series that somewhat resembles the pattern of Game of Thrones, splitting chapters between different POVs and sometimes leaving one character's story off-page for entire books before getting back to them.
Heirs of the Blade turns away from Stenwold Maker, and back to his niece, Cheerwell Maker, and his adopted niece Tynisa, whom we have not seen since Salute the Dark.
Tynisa, the daughter of a Mantis and a Spider, has become a deadly weaponsmaster. Since her father Tisamon died, Tynisa has been wandering aimlessly. She finds her way to the Commonweal, a feudal monarchy of Dragonfly Kinden, and finds herself in the service of the mother of her deceased lover Prince Salme Dien.
Tynisa is haunted, and increasingly in danger of being possessed, by the ghost of her father Tisamon. The Shadows of the Apt setting has always been a dualistic world, where the Apt are scientific, technological, and moving the world into an industrial age, while the magic and mysticism of the Inapt is considered a superstitious legacy of an earlier age. Yet we know from previous books that magic is very real, and Cheerwell Maker, a Beetle who was once Apt and who has now undergone a class change to Inapt mystic, comes to the Commonweal to save her adopted sister.
In the Commonweal, Tynisa is becoming a bloodthirsty single-minded killing machine under her father's influence, and has determined to make Salme Dien's brother hers. The Dragonflies are using her, and she knows it, but she thinks she's using them to get what she wants.
The Commonweal Monarchy is in the midst of putting down a peasant uprising by a band of brigands who fought the Wasps in the Twelve-Year War and have become disenchanted with the Commonweal's claims of just and virtuous feudal lords. Tynisa, initially in the grip of her madness, serves the Commonweal, but finds herself grudgingly sympathizing with the brigands, despite the fact that they are all murderers and cutthroats.
When Cheerwell shows up (along with her Wasp friend-not-quite-lover Thalric), there's an attempt at an exorcism, a lot of diplomacy, inevitable betrayals, and while the Commonweal storyline is wrapped up, we get a definite To Be Continued that points in the direction the rest of the series is heading.
The secondary plot develops from the POV of the Wasp Empress Seda, who first visits the ancient, one-time Slug-kinden city of Khanaphes, which resisted a Wasp-backed invasion in The Scarab Path, and later reveals her own grand plan. There are several other secondary POV characters who point at ongoing technological developments.
So there are a lot of plates spinning, and Heirs of the Blade brings back that Epic Fantasy feel that was kind of missing in the vaguely steampunkish previous book. There are some fight sequences that go on a bit too long (this has made a couple of previous books somewhat of a slog), but mostly the mix of action and dialog and exposition was about right.
This is an underrated epic fantasy series that I wish got more attention.
Also by Adrian Tchaikovsky: My reviews of Children of Time, Children of Ruin, Children of Memory, Empire in Black and Gold, Dragonfly Falling, Blood of the Mantis, Salute the Dark, The Scarab Path, The Sea Watch, The Expert System's Brother, The Expert System's Champion, Made Things, Shards of Earth, and Eyes of the Void.
My complete list of book reviews.
Tor Books, 2012, 622 pages
The greatest foe is the enemy within....
Tynisa is on the run, but she cannot escape the demons of her own mind. Amidst the fragmenting provinces of the Dragonfly Commonweal, her past will at last catch up with her. Her father's ghost is hunting her down.
At the same time, the Wasp Empire seeks to conquer the city of Khanaphes, the fallen jewel of the ancient world. Whilst Empress Seda's soldiers seek only conquest and prestige, she sees herself as the heir to all the old powers of history, and has her eyes on a far greater prize.
Spoilers for earlier books in the series.
I'm seven books deep into this ten-book series, and still enjoying it greatly. Heirs of the Blade was better than the previous book, The Sea Watch, which was fun but felt like Tchaikovsky writing a splatbook about the Sea Kinden in another part of the world.
This is a multi-POV series that somewhat resembles the pattern of Game of Thrones, splitting chapters between different POVs and sometimes leaving one character's story off-page for entire books before getting back to them.
Heirs of the Blade turns away from Stenwold Maker, and back to his niece, Cheerwell Maker, and his adopted niece Tynisa, whom we have not seen since Salute the Dark.
Tynisa, the daughter of a Mantis and a Spider, has become a deadly weaponsmaster. Since her father Tisamon died, Tynisa has been wandering aimlessly. She finds her way to the Commonweal, a feudal monarchy of Dragonfly Kinden, and finds herself in the service of the mother of her deceased lover Prince Salme Dien.
Tynisa is haunted, and increasingly in danger of being possessed, by the ghost of her father Tisamon. The Shadows of the Apt setting has always been a dualistic world, where the Apt are scientific, technological, and moving the world into an industrial age, while the magic and mysticism of the Inapt is considered a superstitious legacy of an earlier age. Yet we know from previous books that magic is very real, and Cheerwell Maker, a Beetle who was once Apt and who has now undergone a class change to Inapt mystic, comes to the Commonweal to save her adopted sister.
In the Commonweal, Tynisa is becoming a bloodthirsty single-minded killing machine under her father's influence, and has determined to make Salme Dien's brother hers. The Dragonflies are using her, and she knows it, but she thinks she's using them to get what she wants.
The Commonweal Monarchy is in the midst of putting down a peasant uprising by a band of brigands who fought the Wasps in the Twelve-Year War and have become disenchanted with the Commonweal's claims of just and virtuous feudal lords. Tynisa, initially in the grip of her madness, serves the Commonweal, but finds herself grudgingly sympathizing with the brigands, despite the fact that they are all murderers and cutthroats.
When Cheerwell shows up (along with her Wasp friend-not-quite-lover Thalric), there's an attempt at an exorcism, a lot of diplomacy, inevitable betrayals, and while the Commonweal storyline is wrapped up, we get a definite To Be Continued that points in the direction the rest of the series is heading.
The secondary plot develops from the POV of the Wasp Empress Seda, who first visits the ancient, one-time Slug-kinden city of Khanaphes, which resisted a Wasp-backed invasion in The Scarab Path, and later reveals her own grand plan. There are several other secondary POV characters who point at ongoing technological developments.
So there are a lot of plates spinning, and Heirs of the Blade brings back that Epic Fantasy feel that was kind of missing in the vaguely steampunkish previous book. There are some fight sequences that go on a bit too long (this has made a couple of previous books somewhat of a slog), but mostly the mix of action and dialog and exposition was about right.
This is an underrated epic fantasy series that I wish got more attention.
Also by Adrian Tchaikovsky: My reviews of Children of Time, Children of Ruin, Children of Memory, Empire in Black and Gold, Dragonfly Falling, Blood of the Mantis, Salute the Dark, The Scarab Path, The Sea Watch, The Expert System's Brother, The Expert System's Champion, Made Things, Shards of Earth, and Eyes of the Void.
My complete list of book reviews.