Empire in Black and Gold

I think insects are under represented in fantasy. Yes, you get your tropey Giant Spiders, but other insects really are not so present. Adrian Tchaikovsky is on a mission to change that. Shadows of the Apt is almost a fantasy celebration of insects. Here we come across different insect ‘Kinden'. The Kinden are all humans, but each has abilities linked to a specific arthropod, be it Beatle, Mantis, Spider, Wasp etc... These are further divided into ‘apt' and ‘inapt' - those who can use machines and those who can use magic. This all has combined into an incredibly layered and fascinatingly realized world.

Empire in Black and Gold opens this story up with a shadow brewing in the East - the Wasp Kinden, hyper-militaristic, are on the march. This is a very military focused novel - a lot of fighting goes on, spread over multiple cities and multiple points of view. The scale is certainly epic and whilst a lot goes on in the novel there is very much a sense that this is only the opening act to something much larger.

There is a lot of creativity here. The different Kinden are really fascinating and I really am intrigued to see where this goes. Some of the fighting was taken a bit to extremes, but the world built was so fascinating that it just kept drawing me in