Tchailkovksy is an incredibly prolific writer, and yet I hadn't read any of his works up to this point. But a novella is always a great entry point, as I think shorter works like these often force writers to really sharpen their storytelling to its core strengths. Everything must be compact, but the expectations of characterization, plot, and world-building remain high. The author does a fantastic job with all three in this book!

I always love genre-blends between science fiction and fantasy where the book explores the idea that any significantly advanced technology or scientific advancement would be indistinguishable from magic. It's such a simple but fascinating premise. I particularly enjoyed the way it played out here, with Nyr, the last remaining Earth man and one who has access to high tech chryosleep and tech, being called upon as a sorcerer to help with a demon problem that is plaguing the town. His story was straightforward, but profound, dealing with the internal workings of a man who finds himself in a post-tech world dealing with a group of people who view his knowledge as something mystical and profound. The story also tackles a very "Star Trek" concept, that of the impartial observer who does not interfere with the goings on of the peoples they are watching. Here, we see Nyr struggle with this concept, after centuries of standing at a distance. Is it right to only observe? When is it right to become involved?

Beyond the plot diving into this concept of technology and magic, the story itself explores the concept of science fiction and fantasy storytelling. In one particularly creative example, an entire chapter is devoted to telling the same story from each perspective. It was incredibly unique and not something I'd ever come across before.

Overall, I really enjoyed this novella. It packed a lot of interesting ideas in alongside a compelling plot. The overall tone and voice of the story was also engaging and interesting, often asking the reader to stop and think about concepts that they may have taken for granted. I highly recommend this one to all science fiction and fantasy readers!

I loved this novella so much - it's smart, emotional, inventive and thoroughly enjoyable. The mash-up of high-tech and historical society is something that always intrigues me, and Tchaikovsky pulls it off perfectly here, with a POV character from each world that is so relatable and understandable it's a wrench to leave them every time. I loved everything this book had to say about fantasy tropes, society, anthropology and humanity - it's magnificent and I can't wait to read it again!

An absolutely brilliant book.
Wonderfully clever throughout.
On a far away world (standard fantasy world) a Princess goes on a quest to wake the Wizard of Legend to save her people from a rampaging DEMON.
Except, our "wizard" is actually an anthropologist from a far away star empire, stranded for centuries on this backwards world.
His "magic" is actually science so far beyond the locals that it seems so impossible it must be MAGIC.
He gets dragged along to fight the "demon" he insists can't be real, all the while having a panic attack because he really shouldn't have left his tower.

My thanks to NetGalley for making an eARC of this book available to me.

This was a very satisfying short novel that could easily have been expanded into a full length book. I've read a small handful of this author's works, and this is my favorite to date.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is truly a master of his craft. He is such an imaginative author and I've become such a huge fan of his worlds as I've read more and more of his work. With nearly all of his titles under my belt, I had high expectations for Elder Race, but was a bit worried about what he'd be able to accomplish in such a short book. My fears were misplaced. Tchaikovsky blew it out of the water yet again. His prose is better than it's ever been. He has a facility with words where you can't help but vividly see his writing playing out in your mind like an incredible movie. The ambiance he's able to create in his work is impressive. I don't want to talk too much about this book's content since it's a short one, but rest assured that it's well worth reading. He really came through in the worldbuilding. I've very excited for you all the see what this book has in store for you!

Please just go in blind because this is the type of book where I feel knowing about its content beforehand is actually a hindrance to your enjoyment of the story.

Ah yes another awesome Tchaikovsky book! It is an inventive, engaging tale set in a distant future, with likeable characters who are faced with a threat to their continued existence. I wouldn't have objected if the tale had gone on longer, but as it is it simply "works" and honestly that is one hell of a feat.
Full review to come on YouTube.

This story is an excellent blend of scifi and fantasy. I really liked the very different POVs presented and they made a great contrast of each other. This novella is a deep but quick read that will leave you wanting more.

The nitty-gritty: A clever mix of fantasy and science fiction that explores the different ways stories are told and interpreted, Elder Race was a joy to read.

Something within the foundation of the tower groaned, deep and tormented. In the next moment Lyn changed her mind: not a living thing at all, but as though the tower contained vast moving parts only now stirring into motion.

How do a princess battling a demon and an ancient anthropologist from the stars share the same story? It’s actually not that hard to imagine if you’re reading something by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Elder Race is just as good as everyone’s saying. This is a very weird but inventive tale, a perfect mash-up of fantasy and science fiction that left me in awe of the author’s ability to not only create an intriguing mystery, but to write a fairly short story with an epic scope and interesting characters. Fans of both genres are going to want to get their hands on this one, trust me.

The story unfolds in alternating chapters between two main characters. First we have Lynesse Fourth Daughter, a disgraced princess who is desperate to rid her kingdom of an insidious demon. Lyn decides to break the rules of the kingdom and journey up the mountain to the Tower where the last Elder has lived for hundreds of years, and ask him to use his magic to help her. Nyr Illim Tevitch is an anthropologist, sent from Earth to observe Lyn’s race. Nyr has been cut off from the rest of the Explorer Corps, and his communications with the satellite above the planet suggest that he’s all alone, yet he continues to carry out his duties: observing but never interacting.

Until the day that Lyn knocks on his door and the two meet for the first time.

Tchaikovsky uses language and storytelling to show how two people can see the same thing but describe it in completely different ways. The beauty of his story is that it’s literally a face-off between a fantasy world and a science fiction world, and I don’t think I’ve ever read anything quite like it. I hesitate to go into too much detail in this review, because experiencing the way the story and its mysteries unfold is one of the joys of reading Elder Race. Let’s just say that Lyn’s world appears to be a medieval one, with kingdoms and swords and monsters, while Nyr’s is clearly set in the future. The conversations between the two are wonderful, full of arguments about magic versus science (in Lyn’s world, science doesn’t really exist). Lyn calls Nyr a magician, but Nyr scoffs at that and proclaims that “magic isn’t real.” There is one chapter in particular that illustrates this beautifully—and if you’ve read the book I’m sure you know which one I’m talking about—and I thought the execution was simply brilliant. The author isn’t afraid to play with language and nuance, and that playful quality added a lovely layer to the story.

Nyr in particular is a fascinating character. He admits that he has clinical depression, and he can access a program called Dissociative Cognition System, or DCS, which locks down his ability to feel emotions. I love the way he describes his depression to Lyn as a “beast,” which is a word she can relate to (she certainly can’t relate to the word “depression”). Not only is he lonely—and frankly peeved—at being left alone on the planet, but he’s lived his life by a strict code of ethics, never to interfere with Lyn’s culture in any way. This idea might sound familiar to Star Trek fans—Prime Directive, anyone?—and I could be mistaken, but I believe this element was a nod to the beloved TV show. The fact that Nyr's decided to finally break this rule says a lot about his state of mind.

The demon itself is very creepy, or I should say the manifestation of the demon. Some of the scenes where they’re hunting the monster in the forest have an eldritch feel to them, and at this point in the story it seems as if the author has switched over to the horror genre. The ending is very strange, and maybe a little too weird and over-the-top for my taste, but it actually worked really well within the framework of the plot.

I would recommend Elder Race to Tchaikovsky fans for sure, and if you’ve always been curious about his work and you aren’t afraid of a challenge, this is the perfect place to start.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

I have a new author that I enjoy reading. I'll admit I didn't do well in reading this book in a timely manner I did enjoy the book. I think this could be the start of a series but if this is the only book then I'm fine with that. The story is about a princess who calls on the help of a sorcerer to help stop a spreading evil. But this is not a full on fantasy story this has science fiction mixed in, That doesn't happen often with most books so to see an author try that and actually do it well was surprising. The ending is the only part that fell short of expectations in my opinion. The story is worth reading. And from now on I know I can trust this author so I'll read his books in a more timely manner.

I have been so unbelievably excited for Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I fell in love with Tchaikovsky's work a few years ago when his novella Made Things was released. Since then, I have enjoyed many other stories, and this start to a new series is no exception.

Are two souls enough to save a planet? That is the question. Lynesse is the Fourth Daughter of the queen, which generally means that she is not at risk of finding herself on the throne. But that doesn't stop Lynesse from caring about her people.

When a demon begins to terrorize those around her, she doesn't hesitate to approach an Elder sorcerer for help. Unfortunately, Nyr is neither a sorcerer nor of the belief that the monster is a demon.

“How much worse to think yourself wise, and still be as ignorant as one who knew themselves a fool?”

Elder Race is arguably one of the boldest and most beautiful science fiction novels I've read this year. It is so creative and immense; it's almost too difficult to find words to describe the experience or how it made me feel.

Lynesse's story is compelling, and I immediately found myself carried away by it all. She's the perfect protagonist, being compassionate yet determined in equal measures. I'm not going to lie; I was basically rooting for her from the start.

More than that, I love how magic and technology collide within these pages, as science and lore battle to the end. It made for such a unique read, one that I feel will be lingering in my mind for quite some time. Does anyone want to place bets on how long it will be before I cave and reread it?

3.5 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews
Summary
Lynesse Fourth Daughter goes against her mother's will by calling on the immortal sorceror Nyrgoth in his tower cut into the mountain. Nyr, however, turns out to be more complex than she envisioned.
Review
I’ve previously read two Adrian Tchaikovsky books: Walking to Aldebaran, which I quite liked, and Shards of Earth, which I thought was something of a mess. I picked up Elder Race to see which evaluation was the more correct. I didn’t really find an answer.
Elder Race is much more like Walking than Shards – it has a small, contained cast; a clear quest; a linear timeline; and a developed story that flows well. At the same time, the end of the book left me wondering what the point of it all had been. It’s descriptive, sometimes emotional, but never really poignant, and with less tension than one might expect. It felt, overall, like an exercise in worldbuilding – either testing out an environment for a larger story, or fleshing out an aspect of an existing story. Except that this story doesn’t really allow for either of those, in any direct sense. While readable and pleasant, it seems to me that Tchaikovsky missed the target on this one; there was just too much of a feeling of So what? at the end. It’s a shame, because I think the concept, while not novel, had good potential, and the framework and characters of the story were well in place.
Note that, by my count, this is a novella, not a novel.
I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Elder Race, as you might have seen in this year’s best novellas piece, is fabulous. My favorite type of novella is one that knows how to use its limited space to make a point, explore an idea, or execute a premise efficiently, smoothly, and with fabulous flair. Elder Race checks off all of these boxes and more to tell a heartfelt tale that focuses on isolation, the meaning of life, communication barriers, and split perspectives all in a small package. Despite only being a few weeks old, it manages to top our favorite novellas of the year, it is definitely worth your time.

The core premise is a two POV short story told by a scientist (Nyr) from a technologically advanced Earth and an evolved human (Lynesse) who no longer recognizes the science of their ancestors. When the story is seen from the scientist’s POV, the narrative is heavily based on science and technology. When the story is told in the descendant’s POV, everything is told from the lens of magic and mysticism. It is an extremely creative idea and it makes use of Tchaikovsky’s dual talent for both science fiction and fantasy, as well as his knack for telling two stories that explicitly foil one another. The insight into the old adage that ‘sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic’ is delightful.

The brass tax of what the plot is actually about is Lynesse climbs her way to Nyr’s tower to awaken him from cryosleep to petition him for help to intervene with a problem that is beyond the scope of her people to solve. A piece of technology from old Earth has awoken and she believes that it can only be stopped by Nyr, a sleeping elder god who had intervened on her family’s request generations ago. The two team up and go on an odyssey, but the quest they go on is very different depending on whose perspective you are reading from.

Lynesse’s perspective is heavily anchored in the present. Her troubles are things right around the corner; present threats that might kill her or her family in a matter of days to years. She is contemplating her purpose in life and how she is going to make her mark on the world and history. Her viewpoint is filled with an infection and engrossing reverence for life and the world that that extends to the reader. While I wouldn’t call Lynesse necessarily optimistic, she is planning for the future and thinking about how to make the best of it.

Nyr on the other hand is an anthropologist mired outside of time and who has discovered that life, and history, are meaningless. He has lived the equivalent of millennia and all it has amounted to is loneliness, isolation, and a complete alienation from humanity. His priorities are that of someone thinking thousands of years ahead. He wants to avoid interaction with Lynesse because while it might fix her problems today, it could affect the direction and purpose of life on this planet in ways that cannot be predicted. He is so focused on the big picture that he literally uses a program to suspend his emotions, particularly empathy, so he can “make the right choices.” He is a wonderful contradictory mess that is an inch from falling off a cliff into a depressive spiral.

The clash and resolution of these perspectives are frankly astoundingly powerful. I have read enough of Tchaikovsky at this point to know that this is a narrative structure that he really excels at, but this is still a step up even for him. The personas at war here are just great and the stylistic differences in narrative structure between the two POVs in the story is one of the coolest narrative tricks I have ever read. It makes the points of the tale stand out like they were written in the sky in burning letters. All of it adds up to one of the best stories of the year.

Rating: Elder Race – 10/10
-Andrew

Published by ‎Tor.com on November 16, 2021

Apart from writing a couple of science fiction’s most memorable novels, Arthur C. Clarke is remembered for his observation that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Many sf writers have quoted Clarke in their fiction, but few have illustrated the point quite as deftly as Adrian Tchaikovsky does in Elder Race.

Lynesse Fourth Daughter is least respected daughter of the Royal Line of Lannesite. Her mother has dismissed her as a dreamer, a child who has not embraced trade and diplomacy but clings to old stories of sorcery and demons. It naturally falls to Lynesse, as her ancestor once did, to seek the help of a sorcerer when demons begin to plague the territory to which she has been relegated.

Lynesse sets off to see the sorcerer in the Tower of Nyrgoth Elder who, like the Wizard of Oz, is a creation of technology and imagination rather than magic. Nyr Illim Tevitch is actually an anthropologist second class who spends most of his time in cold storage. More than a thousand years earlier, Earth entered ecological bankruptcy after sending out generation ships to colonize other planets. One of those colonized worlds is Sophos 4. Lacking resources to support them, Earth abandoned the colonies to their own devices. Many centuries later, Earth revitalized itself and sent new, faster ships to the colonies, not to reacquaint them with Earth but to study their societies without interfering with their development.

The Tower is the outpost on Sophos 4 that Nyr occupies while he studies the feudal society into which the colonists devolved after being cut off from Earth. Nyr hasn’t heard anything from Earth in almost 300 years and is doubtful that anyone on Earth will ever visit his outpost again, much less read the reports he occasionally writes. Nyr is almost fine with that, given his suspicion that he isn’t much of an anthropologist. Having come to the rescue of Sophos 4 a couple of generations earlier at the request of Lynesse’s ancestor, he decides that he might as well do it again when Lynesse asks for his help.

One of the demons is a forgotten and malfunctioning piece of technology used by the original human colonists (the elder race). The more consequential demons are something else, something Nyr can’t quite understand, although he knows they aren’t demons. The story follows Nyr and Lynesse as they face the challenge in their own ways.

The story is filled with clever riffs on the theme that magic is simply misunderstood science. Nyr’s decision to break the rules and tell Lynesse the truth about her society’s origin gives rise to my favorite passage. Nyr’s story about the planet’s colonization is juxtaposed with Lynesse’s understanding of history as it has been passed down through the ages. The only difference between the two versions of the same story is that Nyr understands it to be a story of science while Lynesse regards it as a story of magic. The side-by-side recounting of the same story from two different perspectives is brief but brilliant.

Nyr is a sympathetic character. Apart from his understandable doubts that his occupation has value and his fear that he might never return home, he is ambivalent about the emotional suppressor that is wired into his biochemistry. He can turn off his emotions when he needs to make rational decisions, but he isn’t sure that his decisions are really any better when they are devoid of emotion. He eventually makes a self-sacrificing decision that would probably be the same whether or not it is influenced by emotion. Sometimes rationality and love of humanity lead to the same end, at least when people are decent.

Elder Race is a smart, thought provoking story that doesn't waste words. In the final pages, when Nyr faces a crossroads about the remainder of his life as a scientist/sorcerer, it seems clear that any choice he makes will be fine, simply because the choice is his to make.

RECOMMENDED

I received this book as an ebook advanced reading copy in exchange for an honest review. Thanks to the publisher, the author and Netgalley for the access.

This little book is a nice confluence of science fiction and fantasy told between two characters with very different world views. We have a lesser princess living in what seems like a high fantasy world replete with demons and grand tales of adventuring and wizardry. On the other hand we have a marooned low-level anthropologist working through a translator that repeatedly fails to make his meaning clear.

It is a journeying story, the princess defying her family to fight a demonic plague in another part of the world. It is also a tale of cross-cultural misunderstanding and linguistic trials. It is a solid adventure, but I'll admit I wasn't especially engaged. Once I grasped the language and contact themes, I felt that the story had made its point and the plot itself didn't add a lot to the story.

It was a fairly enjoyable read, something that is probably better enjoyed in one or two sessions, rather than the series of weeks I spent with it. I haven't read anything else by the author, and this book has no impact on the question of whether I will read anything else by him.

There is certainly skilled world-building in evidence and the characters were amusing and well-rounded.

Adrian Tchaikovsky does it again in this rich novella that perfectly blends fantasy with sci-fi elements. Its central quest resembles that of any epic fantasy novel, while also featuring futuristic tech and adversaries. A unique novel that will constantly have you turning the page.

To the queen (her mother) and the court, Lynesse the Fourth Daughter is at best, a nuisance, and at worst, an embarrassment. When reports of a demon terrorizing and infecting the land arrive, Lynesse believes her time to prove her worth has come. She sets out with her companion, Esha, to find Nyr, the Elder sorcerer her ancestors made a pack with. When Nyr meets Lynesse, asking him for magic to stop the demon, he knows he's already too close to her world than he should be, as a secondary anthropologist. His duty is to study their planet, not get involved with it. But the long years alone, combined with the silence from his home for the last several centuries, persuades him to help, even though what they think is magic is only advanced science. Neither Lynesse nor Nyr are prepared for the enemy they face, and neither magic nor science may be able to help them in the end.

This is the first Adrian Tchaikovsky book I've read, and I'm glad I tried it! ELDER RACE is an interesting combination of perspectives where one character believes the world around her contains magic, and the other understands the exact advanced science (mostly) they call magic. Nyr's story is told in first POV, while Lynesse's is told in third. Nyr is a tragic hero, long abandoned (intentionally or not) by his own people and left in a position where he is only supposed to observe and study, never care or intervene. He is achingly lonely, and to Lynesse's people, considered the last of his kind. His struggle with depression is heartbreakingly authentic.

The reader doesn't get as intimate a look inside Lynesse's head since her POV is third person, but she remains a compelling character. She has been looked over for so long, made fun of by her more important siblings, and everyone but her companion seem to doubt her capabilities. She is willing to sacrifice everything she has and is to prove herself and save her people.

While I loved the characters, the conclusion left a little to be desired. A couple of big questions never got answered, like what the 'demon' actually was or what it wanted and what happened to Nyr's people. As a character-driven novella, this wasn't too unexpected, but it made the ending less satisfying.

Overall, ELDER RACE is a story of a secondary anthropologist failing miserably to not care about the people around him and his journey to embrace a new, unexpected life for himself.

No one believes there really is a demon attacking the borders of her mother’s kingdom, except for the Queen’s frequently ignored fourth daughter. Because Lynesse, the disrespected and disregarded Fourth Daughter of the Queen, believes in the old hero tales of her ancestors. So when a demon attacks the borders of the kingdom, Lynesse goes to the tower of Nyrgoth Elder, the great sorcerer who helped her great-grandmother defeat a demon over a century ago.

Because Nyrgoth, rather foolishly in his own opinion, promised Astresse that if she, or any descendants of her line, called upon him in his remote tower and requested his aid, he would answer. Even though he knows he shouldn’t.

Even though he secretly hoped that she would come herself, and soon, to rescue him from his profound loneliness. Just before he went back into the deepest of sleeps for another century, only to be awakened by the great-granddaughter of the woman he loved to face a promise he should never have made.

If this sounds like fantasy, it is. But it’s also science fiction, part of a long and storied list of works where Earth seeded other planets by sending out colony ships to far distant worlds – and then forgot about them, one way or another.

And those colony worlds, either deliberately or through the fullness of time, distance and absence, forgot that once upon a time their ancestors traveled the stars.

Like Pern, and Darkover, and Harmony and Celta, among many others, the descendants of those colonists lost the knowledge of how to use the high-tech that brought them, or deliberately buried that aspect of their history, until something happens to remind them. Either by discovering the wreck of the original ship, as occurred in both Pern and Celta, by rediscovering the documentation, a la Harmony, or by Earth ships returning to reclaim their lost colony – only to learn that their supposedly lost colony wants little or nothing to do with them, as was the case in Darkover.

Elder Race represents an entirely different possibility, one that will be familiar to anyone who remembers the Star Trek Next Gen episode “Who Watches the Watchers”, where a Federation science outpost is observing a proto-Vulcan culture as an anthropological study. The planetary inhabitants are not supposed to know they’re being watched, but technology glitches and damage control ensues in an attempt to minimize the cultural contamination that was never supposed to have happened in the first place.

Nyrgoth, actually Anthropologist Second Class Nyr Illim Tevitch, takes the place of the Federation in Elder Race. Earth sent a team of sociologists and anthropologists to Sophos 4 to observe the progress of the colony that had been implanted centuries before, had no knowledge of their high-tech origins, and had returned to a much lower level of technology than the one they came from.

But his team returned to Earth centuries ago. As often happens in lost colony stories, Earth was in a crisis and sent a recall. Nyr was left behind, in the belief that his teammates would return in the not too distant future. Which hasn’t happened yet and Nyr no longer has any expectation that it ever will.

He’s done his best to maintain his mission. Except that one time when Astresse banged on the door of his tower, dragged him out of said tower to fix something that was a direct result of the high-tech left behind by the original colonization, and pretty much broke his heart when she went to rule her now-safe kingdom and he took himself back to his lonely tower because that was what he was supposed to do.

Now one of Astresse’s descendants has banged on his door, intending to remind him of his promise but inadvertently reminding him that he’s all alone on this world and that his choices are limited to putting himself out of his own misery, going mad with loneliness, or admitting that his mission is over and it’s time to join the world he has instead of mourning for the one that has forgotten him.

If he can just find a way to get rid of this pesky bit of hybrid technology that is masquerading as a demon, before the situation gets more FUBAR’d than it already is..

Escape Rating A+: The story in alternates from fantasy to SF and back again as it switches its point of view from Lynesse to Nyr and we see from inside their heads how vastly different their worldviews are.

But no matter whose eyes we’re using to see the world, their emotional landscape is surprisingly similar while being not just miles but actually lightyears apart at the same time. There’s a point in the story where Nyr attempts to tell Lynesse the unvarnished truth about her world and his place in it, but the chasm between their respective understandings is so huge that no matter what he says, she still hears his story in the terms that she understands, terms of myth and legend, tales of heroes and demons, and magic capable of changing or destroying her world.

While Nyr is constantly aware that the only magic he is capable of is of the Clarke variety, the kind that “all technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from.”

In the end, this felt like a story about opposing beliefs and perceptions. She believes he’s a great wizard. He believes he’s a second-class and second-rate anthropologist. She believes he’s a hero out of legend. He believes that she’s the hero and that he’s a faker, a failure, or both. She believes that he can save her people, because she’s not capable of doing it herself. He believes that she’s every bit the hero that her great-grandmother was, and that he’s just along for the ride.

They’re both right, and they’re both wrong. They are also both, in spite of appearances, very, very human.

One of the best things about this story is the way that they manage to save the day, fight their own demons, and ultimately develop a strong and sustaining friendship that never trips over the line into the possibility of romance. Because it really, really shouldn’t. They’re too far apart and too unequal in too many ways for that to work. Instead, they hesitantly reach towards a friendship that is strong and true and forged in fire – and looks to be the saving of each of them.

And it’s a terrific read that manages to be both perfect in its relatively short length while still leaving the reader wishing there were more.

There were a lot of clever aspects to this one in terms of the evolution of language and the way history becomes myth. But even though it's short, I lost all momentum and desire to read it as the exact same miscommunication happened over and over again to the point where it was no longer interesting.

I DNF'd at 58% because I found my curiosity (which is usually the driving factor for me reading a story to the end that isn't 100% gripping me) being overshadowed by the repetition and lack of depth to all the characters except Nyr.

This is my first Adrian Tchaikovsky and although I'm definitely willing to try more of his works, this book did not really offer as much enjoyment as I thought it would. The writing is good but I think a younger audience would get to enjoy the story more . However, the less-than two hundred pages definitely makes this an easy read.

An anthropologically and linguistically fascinating sci-fantasy novella about the responsibility of the observer, the power of legend, and communication. My first novella by Tchaikovsky and I look forward to reading many more. 4.5 stars rounded up to 5!

Check out my full review at the link!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY_J8xsGR0U