The Tiger and the Wolf

Imagine a world where humans had animal spirts and could shift between their animal and human form with nothing more than a thought.

Now, imagine the people express and share the characteristics of their animal spirits.

Add in some intrigue, some existential threat, rebellious teenagers, misinformation, and ancient history.

Mix.

This story is beautiful, exciting, and refreshingly different.

“It made her beautiful, as fire was beautiful even as it destroyed.”

Okay, so, it took me a shamefully long time to finish this because of how much I was liking it when I started it in May. I would say overall it had a pretty slow pace which is why I had some trouble picking the book back up. I also feel like I still don't have a super strong grasp on the world but other than that the world-building is really original and I am as always a sucker for a map at the start of a book. I don't know if I'll continue but if I do I'll probably just listen to it on audio.

I feel like there was a good offset between Maniye knowing virtually nothing and the other characters being more fleshed out with deeper backstories. I think it would have been really slow without the multiple POV's. The final battle scene was so good too. 

My favorites were probably Broken Axe (I need him bad... why would they do my man like that come on dawg) and Loud Thunder (in a your dad's weird hermit friend you're strangely enamoured with as a kid type of way) and his dogs (rip Matt, sadly only one of the dogs live in this one😢).

// the speculative fiction authors challenge
// part 3 continued: Adrian Tchaikovsky

Prior to this novel I've only read Elder Race, a novella I wasn't particularly excited about, but for the sake of this reading challenge I wanted to read a novel length book as well.

I will acknowledge that Tchaikovsky is very thorough in his worldbuilding. I do really enjoy this universe of tribes that worship these animal gods and can shapeshift into said animal. But... The pacing of this book is unfathomably slow. And most of the character building is aggressive male behaviour (and sometimes aggressive women trying to prove their worth in this animal universe) and I got really tired of the stereotype animal characteristics projected onto these “humans” very early on. I don't know... It didn't work for me.

I don't know if it's the same for all Tchaikovsky's books, but I'm thinking they work better for someone who loves rich worldbuilding more so than complex characters. I'm the opposite: I prefer to understand the world through the characters.

So it's a 2.5* for me, I'll round up to 3. And the verdict of this challenge is Tchaikovsky is not for me.