Book Review: <em>Empire in Black and Gold</em> by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Publisher: Pyr
Year: 2010

The other day I was speaking with a friend about the nature of sports fans. I’ve never been one, and at first didn’t really get the mentality. But soon enough I realized that fandom is fandom, and while I may not follow athletics I certainly have more fandoms than the average bear, anyway, and probably the average person, too.

There’s a certain clout that comes with getting on the ground floor of something that will gain such a following, with being one of the people who got in before it was necessarily cool to be in. And so I was kind of excited about reading Empire in Black and Gold if only for that reason alone (and there were others, but I’ll get to them): never before have I read a debut novel so immediately after its publication. So this was new for me in general.

Empire in Black and Gold is author Adrian Tchaikovksy’s debut and the first book in his Shadows of the Apt series, of which two more have hit shelves by now. It’s fantasy through and through, but Tchaikovsky puts a nice spin on it, offering up something a bit different while still remaining pretty well within the usual tropes. The tale takes place in the Lowlands, where aging artificer Stenwold Maker is trying desperately to convince the independent city-states of the Beetle-kinden and Ant-kinden that an invasion by a new power, the Wasp Empire, is only a matter of time. Of course, no one believes him, and he must take matters into his own hands as time runs short. He isn’t alone, as he’s got a few students willing to help: Totho, half-breed artificer, competent but cynical; Tynisa, Stenwold’s adopted Spider-kinden daughter, beautiful and deadly; Salma, errant noble of the Dragonfly Commonweal, handsome and deadly; and Cheerwell, Stenwold’s nephew, inexperienced but determined to please.

Oh, but right: the insect thing. In Tchaikovsky’s world, though the inhabitants are human(ish), each individual belongs to a sort of subrace identified with a different insect or arachnid. Some breeds, like the Beetle-kinden to which Stenwold and Cheerwell belong, seem pretty human, by and large, while others, like the massive, clawed Scorpion-kinden, are quite different. Each race also has access to certain Arts unique to their people, like being able to grow wings and fly, see in the dark, shoot energy from their palms, and so on. The end result is a cool alternative solution to elves and dwarves for bringing diversity to a fantasy world.

The world itself is also worth mentioning, and this is critical: much fantasy goes for a medieval time period or, more lately, an industrial one. Tchaikovsky places his world firmly in transition between medievalism and superstition and a widespread industrial modernization. The world was, not so long ago, ruled by the Moth-kinden, whose magic and mysticism informed the world; now they have been thrown off by the Apt, the general term for all breeds that grok mechanical things, and have built up industry, walking clockwork vehicles, airships, and weapons, like crossbows. But there’s still a divide for now, and Tchaikovsky shows it well.

The writing is solid, and the plotting quick and active after the first chunk; laying the groundwork for the story took a little longer than I would’ve liked, but once the plot got moving it didn’t stop, and often kept several plates spinning at once. This is a tale of adventure, intrigue, and action, and though Tchaikovsky is certainly guilty of some of the old cliches, like the Obligatory Fantasy Badass, the uniqueness of his setting and depth of his characters generally excuse this point. If the idea has interested you thus far you’ll probably find something to enjoy.

If I’m totally honest I found enough minor flaws here to say that I’m not totally on Tchaikovsky’s team yet, but I’ve already picked up both published sequels, Dragonfly Falling and Blood of the Mantis, and will definitely continue to watch his work with great interest. This is a debut, and sometimes reads like one, but it also shows great promise.

I should also take a moment to commend Pyr, the publisher, for how awesome it is. Pyr’s only been around for a few years now, and I’ve only known about them for a few months myself, via The Dragon Page: Cover to Cover (itself a podcast of unspeakable value to the SFF fan). Every single cover I’ve seen of Pyr’s has been gorgeous, the kind of thing that makes you contemplate rearranging your bookshelf so that you can have your books facing forward, cover out. They also seem to just really grab some great and interesting work: if Empire in Black and Gold is any indication, I’m gonna need a bigger bookshelf.

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