Empire in Black and Gold

I started Empire in Black and Gold after finishing Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time, which I enjoyed immensely, mostly due to how original it was. Given that his Shadow of the Apt series also featured insects heavily, which is rarely done in fantasy, I wanted to give it a try.
The first thing I noticed was that the writing definitely wasn’t as good as Children of Time, but this is hardly surprising given that CoT was written after he finished this ten-book series, so I would be surprised if he hadn’t improved.
Each race in SotA is part of a particular kinden, which take their Art from a specific insect. The ants communicate telepathically, the beetles build, the flies fly and the wasps basically shoot fireballs as they rapaciously conquer everything they see. The Inapt races, such as mantis’s, spiders, moths etc. simply cannot use any mechanical device, even a doorlatch. There’s plenty of history that is alluded to, and the mythos here is obviously deep. The world is basically undergoing a steampunk industrial revolution with insect themes, and the clash of magic and technology grows to be a significant part of the story in later books.
For now though, this book is about Stenwold Maker, a beetle master artificer, and the team of agents, young and old, that he has assembled to prepare resistance against the conquering wasp empire. It’s certainly enjoyable, but this is a series that needs to be taken as a whole rather than as individual books, even though each book wraps up it’s primary plot line.

Note: The below is a review of the first five books in the series

After I read Empire in Black and Gold, I recommended it to a couple of my friends, but I found that I had trouble doing so wholeheartedly. I found that I was looking forward to some of the characters (particularly the deadly but deeply flawed “Mantis” Tisamon) and to the next location that Tchaikovsky would describe, as they would often be interesting and thoughtful twists on concepts that have rarely been so well expanded upon in fantasy. The downside of the book lies mostly in the spotty record it has with its POVs, which range from the exciting and nuanced (Tisamon, and the imperial spy Thalric), to the dismal (the story’s “Main character” Cheerwell and half-breed artificer Totho).

Cheerwell in particular is a lead weight on the series, growing ever more important from one story to the next while blundering her way earnestly through interesting situations and somehow earning the undying love of everyone she meets. In that description lies another of the story’s shortcomings, which is the author’s penchant for pairing off every character you meet. Like as not, if you meet a new male character, expect a new female to appear somewhere soon for him to lust over, or vice versa.

The stories are brisk, exciting reads that I often finished in a day, but the series wore out my patience for its flaws in about the fifth book, when the painfully earnest good guys had won one too many heroic last stands and the characters I didn’t care for survived one too many scrapes I sincerely hoped would kill them off. But I enjoyed the time I spent, by and large, and I’d recommend trying it to those who still ready fantasy as voraciously as I once did.

Lets start from positive. The world building at the beginning of this book is astonishing. The society of human tribes, carrying varied mental and physical characteristics and insect-related talents, pooled me in from the second chapter. Unfortunately, after the great beginning, the rest is just an OK adventure book. The war is threatening a peaceful town and the group of protagonists goes on the mission to other lands (with not clearly defined goal). They face various dangers and engage themselves in a lot of fights. I went through first few fights with big interest but started skipping pages during multiple others. After a while it all became just more of the same. The personal stories of protagonists and multiple parallels to real world somehow were not enough to keep me involved in the plot. There are crumbs of new information about the make-up of this imaginary world scattered through the story but only crumbs. Probably more will be revealed in next 10 books but I gave up on this series.

I loved Children of Time (6 stars) and enjoyed The Expert Systems Brother and Spiderlight (both 5 stars) but Empire in Black and Gold was just OK book for me. Of course, and judging from reviews, the other readers may enjoy this series much more.

PS. I tried the other series by Tchaikovski, The Tiger and the Wolf, with similar result; I was fascinated by the great world building at the beginning but my interest started dying at about 50% into the book. I think I will stick to stand-alone books by this author or wait for the second part of Children of Time.

An absolutely breathtaking fantasy that postulates a world filled with humans who have adopted traits of insects and have evolved into separate strains of humanity–each remarkably distinct from the other. How exactly this came to be is not fully explained, but it stands to reason that as the series evolves this will be dealt with on a deeper level. The characters are remarkably fluid and dense with detail, as are their relationships with each other. The background techno-setting is essentially steampunk in an advanced medieval-type world…highly entertaining and well-thought out. Action is frenetic at times–masterfully done. The plot moves along quite swiftly…yanking you in by your lapels. Truly a refreshing work, and I look forward to devouring everything written about this marvelous world.

This is difficult to review. I bought this book after reading Dogs of War and Guns of the Dawn, both of which were excellent, but didn’t realise this book was part of a 10 book series.
This first book is certainly good; weaker than the others I had read, but then it’s his first book, and we might assume he would improve.
But after book 3 in the series, I found I couldn’t be bothered to carry on. I began to feel that events were likely to just repeat on and on, the main characters started to get a little boring, and I couldn’t face the inevitable plot arcs they would follow. Had he concluded the story in 3 books, that would have been great, but 10 seems just too many.