Showing results by author "Adrian Tchaikovsky" in All Categories

Eres Ffenegh — "the City on the Back of a Crab" — is the next state slated for conquest by the Palleseen, but its citizens won't give up sovereignty easily, and the siege has now dragged into the harsh Eresi winter. The defenders – both locals and Pal renegades – hold an uneasy alliance against the enemy at the gates, while the Pal army is constantly looking over its shoulder for the next self-destructive dictate of their government back home.

Ancient powers are waking . . . The Scarab Path is the fifth book in the critically acclaimed epic fantasy series Shadows of the Apt by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The war with the Wasp Empire has ended in a bitter stalemate, and Collegium has nothing to show for it but wounded veterans. Cheerwell Maker...

Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden.

City-by-city, kingdom-by-kingdom, the Palleseen have sworn to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world. As their legions scour the world of superstition with the bright flame of reason, so they deliver a mountain of ragged, holed and scorched flesh to the field hospital tents just behind the frontline. Which is where Yasnic, one-time priest, healer and rebel, finds himself. Reprieved from the gallows and sent to war clutching a box of orphan Gods, he has been sequestered to a particularity unorthodox medical unit.

Uctebri’s long search for the Shadow Box is finally over. Now the vampiric sorcerer can begin his dark ritual. The Wasp-kinden’s emperor believes this will grant him immortality, but Uctebri has his own plans - for the emperor and the empire. The mighty Wasp armies are on the march. And now war is imminent, spymaster Stenwold can finally separate allies from false friends. For the empire won’t stop until a black and gold flag hangs over Collegium, Stenwold's home city.

An age ago, the Seraphon temple-ship Wings of Serendipitous Fire was blasted from the skies of Shyish. Now, Irixi Starseer, servant of the mage-priest Sek'atta, is sent to the ancient ruin of the temple-ship to recover a prophecy inscribed on its walls, a prophecy as shattered as the rest of the fallen vessel. The Stormcast Vael Scar-Helm seeks the same ruin, chasing a memory that has haunted him through many Reforgings. Simultaneously, the mage Perlo leads a group of Steelhelms to the site, pursuing rumours of a treasure beyond imagining.

A city makes its last stand . . . War Master’s Gate is the ninth book in the critically acclaimed epic fantasy series Shadows of the Apt by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The Empire’s mighty imperial armies are marching on Collegium once more. They’ve learnt from past failures and this time their...

The Sci-fi and Fantasy podcast from the best of futures! In this future, humanity has solved its problems and is now sending spaceships from Earth, not in a desperate attempt to escape the apocalypse but because we can do so in a spirit of hope and exploration. As a part of the Starship Alexandria Project, the far-future analogues of 21st century authors Emma Newman and Adrian Tchaikovsky have been tasked to make recommendations from the ship's vast library of creative works based on the preferences of our 21st century counterparts. Each of us will take it in turns to nominate a book, film or ...

Danger lurks beneath dark waters . . . The Sea Watch is the sixth book in the critically acclaimed epic fantasy series Shadows of the Apt by Adrian Tchaikovsky. A shadow is falling over Collegium. Despite the tenuous peace, Stenwold Maker knows that the Empire will return for his city. Even as...

Loret is fresh off the boat, and just in time. As Cohort-Invigilator of Correct Appreciation, Outreach department, she’s here as aide to the Palleseen Resident, Sage-Invigilator Angilly. And Sage-Invigilator Angilly – Gil to her friends – needs a second in the spectacularly illegal, culturally offensive and diplomatically inadvisable duel she must fight at midnight.

An empress demands her birthright . . . The Air War is the eighth book in the critically acclaimed epic fantasy series Shadows of the Apt by Adrian Tchaikovsky. All is in turmoil as the world moves towards war. In Solarno, spies eye one another and ready their knives – while the people of Myna...

The sun is bloated, diseased, dying perhaps. Beneath its baneful light, Shadrapar, last of all cities, harbours fewer than 100,000 human souls. Built on the ruins of countless civilisations, Shadrapar is a museum, an asylum, a prison on a world that is ever more alien to humanity. Bearing witness to the desperate struggle for existence between life old and new is Stefan Advani: rebel, outlaw, survivor. This is his testament, an account of the journey that took him into the blazing desolation of the western deserts and into the labyrinths and caverns of the underworld.

The end of the world has been and gone. There was no one great natural disaster, no all-consuming world war, no catastrophic pandemic. Only scores of storms, droughts, and selfish regional conflicts. Humanity was not granted a heroic end. Instead, it bled to death from a thousand cuts. But where Earth fell apart, Mars pulled together. Engineered men and beasts, aided by Bees – an outlawed distributed intelligence – survived through co-operation, because there was simply no alternative.

The days of peace are over. Empire in Black and Gold is the first instalment in the critically-acclaimed epic fantasy series Shadows of the Apt by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It is a world populated by kinden – species of human that have taken on the characteristics of animals, from spiders and ants...

Every hero must be tested . . . Dragonfly Falling is the second book in the critically acclaimed epic fantasy series Shadows of the Apt by Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Children of Time. The Wasp Empire’s armies are on the move – and the city of Tark will...

It's always idyllic in the village until the landlord comes to call. Because the landlord is an Ogre. And Ogres rule the world, with their size and strength and appetites. It's always been that way. It's the natural order of the world. And they only eat people sometimes. But when the headman's son, Torquell, dares lift his hand against the landlord's son, he sets himself on a path to learn the terrible truth about the Ogres, and about the dark sciences that ensured their rule.

A dread ritual casts a deadly shadow . . . Blood of the Mantis is the third novel in Adrian Tchaikovsky's richly imagined Shadows of the Apt series, following Dragonfly Falling. Stenwold must rally his allies for battle against the Empire, even as it seeks a dangerous artifact of enormous power...

Lynesse la quarta figlia è una giovane e impavida principessa con il dono di finire sempre in mezzo a qualche guaio. Quando però il regno viene attaccato da un demone, sa che l'unico modo per salvare il suo popolo è appellarsi al patto stipulato fra la sua famiglia e lo stregone Nyrgoth l'antico. Ma Nyrgoth non ha nulla di magico; è in realtà un antropologo terrestre inviato sul pianeta Sophos 4 per studiare la società postcoloniale di Lynesse e per raccogliere dati sulla storia e sulla cultura del posto, senza interagire con gli abitanti per nessun motivo.

Mars. The red planet. A new frontier for humanity: a civilisation where humans can live in peace, lord and master of all they survey. But this isn't Space City from those old science-fiction books. It's more like Hell City, built into and from a huge crater. There's a big silk canopy over it, feeding out atmosphere as we generate it, little by little, because we can't breathe the air here. I guess it's a perfect place to live, if you want to live on Mars. At some point I must have wanted to live on Mars, because here I am.

The greatest foe is the enemy within . . . Heirs of the Blade is the seventh book in the critically acclaimed epic fantasy series Shadows of the Apt by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Tynisa is on the run, but she cannot escape the demons of her own mind. Amidst the fragmenting provinces of the Dragonfly...