Anyone who has met me IRL knows that I love Adrian Tchaikovsky and that I think he is as significant to the science fiction genre moving forward as Brandon Sanderson has been to the fantasy genre. Shards of Earth is one of my favorite books of all time and I was so excited to get an eGalley of Eyes of the Void, it's sequel.

Long story short: Giant aliens make weird art out destroying planets and killing everyone one on them. In the past book, a person that was designed to be a weapon against these is spending his sorta-retirement helping out on a space freighter because he was designed to be able to survive going into the void or unspace better than normal humans. This book grows upon this and further pushes Idris, the main character, back into the void in search of something to help him battle the mysterious Architects.

I loved this book and for all the reasons Tchaikovsky fans have learned to hope for. There are great aliens of nonhuman varieties, the characters are fantastic and Tchaikovsky does weird science better than anyone else in the business currently. I'm super excited for book three and I will definitely be picking it up on release day.

The follow-up to Shards of Earth, Eyes of the Void follows our rag-tag Vulture God crew as they attempt to unravel the mysteries of the Architects. All the usual players are there and their unique personalities shine through.

I feel like while Shards of Earth focused on character building, Eyes of the Void focused on world building. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I much prefer character driven stories to world driven stories. Here the characters seem like they melt into the fantastical world that Tchaikovsky has created. The world is definitely the star here. I also felt Solace, my favorite badass received far less page time than the previous book. Maybe that was just me, but there are a lot of characters here vying for time on the page. I thought the story was interesting and kept me captivated, but there was just something missing character wise for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC.

This book is the middle of a trilogy or perhaps 2nd of more. I found the Shards of Earth fascinating, and was delighted to immerse back into this enormously complex and well imagined world, where humans have encountered both friendly and hostile other life, as well as technological life. By undergoing an extreme brain modification that most don't survive, a few humans are able to control unspace, facilitating instant travel through normal space. This isn't an enviable superpower, the navigators that survive the process don't sleep and barely hang on to sanity. Idris, one of the few surviving navigators, is an unlikely superhero, but as the only person to be able to somewhat communicate with the Architects, he takes on the very heroic mission of saving all other life and planets from their mysterious masters. He is aided by friends with very complex motivations, all with very well developed and highly interesting side stories. This is a story with an epic scale, but brought close with likable, relatable characters, and even things so unlikely as ritualized sword fighting. The discovery that changes everything is a bit anticlimactic, but it brings the story to a good pausing point while we wait for the next book to learn more. Hopefully we don't have to wait too long!

I’m trying to avoid spoilers for this series, so this will be a fairly short review, but suffice to say that I loved this book! Although if you’ve seen my other reviews for this author that’s not a surprise 😉

This is the second book in the Final Architecture series, and I would strongly recommend reading the first book immediately before this one. There are a lot of complex concepts, places, people, etc. to keep track of. But you won’t regret the experience!

I am so happy that this book did not suffer from the dreaded middle book syndrome (but with Tchaikovsky as the author I didn’t think it would). I think the pacing of this book is a bit faster than the first one—it’s pretty much go go go. And my new favorite term for the Ints was introduced, “abyssonaut”, which I think is just a perfect descriptor for what they do. Now I am waiting with bated breath for book 3 to see how this all wraps up.

Thank you to NetGalley & Orbit Books for this advanced reader copy. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This is an unforgettable sci-fi story that had me on the edge of my seat. There were strong women, a dark story, time travel, and a diverse cast. The world building is stunning, and the author's humor throughout was fantastic.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is becoming one of my favorite Sci-Fi writers, because he’s got great prose. In the middle of really hectic battle scenes, he’ll have this perfectly beautiful description that will floor me for a beat.

<i>Eyes of the Void</i> picks up right where <i>Shards of Earth</i> ends. We get more of what worked in the first book: compelling characters, Oli’s expletives, great action scenes, and more horror elements. This book struggles a little with pacing. The first section is slow, the second is insanely fast, and the rest is medium which makes for an odd ride.

Still a really fun read and looking forward to the final installment.

<i>Thank you Netgalley and Tor for giving me an e-arc for an unbiased review.</i>

DNF @ 30%

It saddens me profoundly to have to abandon this second installment in what promised to be a very intriguing, very compelling SF saga from an author I have come to admire, but unfortunately Eyes of the Void proved to be a very difficult book to get through. I am unable to pinpoint exactly where it did not work for me, whether it was the constant change in POV - which is something that usually does not bother me, but in this instance turned the story into a fractured and distracting collage of perspectives - or if the blame fell on the pace, that feels quite slow, unlike what happened in Shards of Earth where I literally flew through the pages in what proved to be an extremely engrossing reading experience.

I have not given up on this novel, and I will certainly give it another chance at a later date, being quite aware that my present reaction might very well be a passing one due to mood or other considerations, and for this reason I am leaving a 3-stars rating as a result of all the reasons given above.

When I learned that Adrian Tchaikovsky is a table-top and live action roleplaying gamer and game creator, it helped me to make sense of his style of writing. In “Eyes of the Void,” as in other books of his that I've read, the table (-top) is indeed set, with places, supporting characters and MacGuffins intentionally balanced in their strengths, weaknesses, uses and detriments to the main characters.

Some examples: Olli is a congenital amputee but has a prodigious ability to manipulate drones and prosthetics. Idris doesn't sleep and is constantly teetering on the verge of insanity, which balances his ability to see into and travel through “Unspace.” The Parthenon and Hugh factions, which come into conflict in this book, are balanced in that Hugh's ships have more raw firepower, while the Parthenon's vessels are more technologically sophisticated. I could go on.

In gaming, “balance” is prized because, without balance, you don't have dynamism. In unbalanced games, clear solutions become obvious, and then doing anything else is a losing play. That's no fun. The same dynamism is desirable in sci-fi adventure stories like this one, and the game-like setting and plot clearly deliver it.

The danger, though, is that the (highly engaging) mechanics of the plot may take too much precedence over thematic content and characterization. That happens somewhat in this book, as the cast of characters expands and Tchaikovsky exercises himself to put the pieces in place for the final volume of his trilogy.

After learning so much about our heroes in Book 1, there is scant further character development in Book 2, and correspondingly lengthier action/battle sequences that I had to take notes on in order to keep straight. (This is not to say that I didn't enjoy them.) The choices people made and the action they took were predominantly dictated by the logic of the situations they were thrust into, not by their emotions or internal motivations. That lack of interiority made the characters feel less real to me than they did in book one.

The eldritch, inexplicable, uncanny nature of Unspace, the Architects and the Originators was repeatedly emphasized without being much explicated, and that tested my patience, though not to the breaking point.

This is all observational, and not intended to discourage anyone from reading the book. I can confidently say that if you like this kind of thing, then this is the kind of thing you will like – you know who you are!

For my part I'm eagerly looking forward to Book 3 in this series.

I received and ARC from NetGalley for an honest review.

I really enjoyed the first book in the series, which had an interesting cast of characters, so was really looking forward to this book. The protagonists are the same (mostly) and is still a myriad of different groups with different aims, fighting for their future.

There was good story progression, some revelations, and a LOT of different angles for the disparate characters. You can sense their conflicting desires and motivations, and it gives for a good mix.

Overall, a good, fun, read, with some depth and a little mysticism. It's still not clear what the bigger threat is, but we're closer........so read on!

"Eyes of the Void" is the bridge novel in The Final Architecture Series. Just like the first novel, it is an intricate, funny and just wonderful space opera. Creatures, cyborgs and bug galore. Weird all powerful beings and impressive world building where lawyers duel with each other through statutes and/or with knives sheathed up their sleeves. And a doorstopper of a novel. Yeah - this was alright. 5 stars because it's Adrian's book.

Second in the series about the remnants of humanity and other species trying to survive the Architects, superpowered entities that like to turn inhabited planets into weird sculpture. Lots of events and alliances in this entry, with some more insights into the unknowable mysteries of the Architects and unspace—unspeakable colors, lights that melt you instantly, etc. If you liked the first volume you will probably like the sequel.

Shards of Earth was the first book by Adrian Tchaikovsky that I read and I was anxiously awaiting the second book in the series, and I am happy to say that Eyes of the Void took everything I enjoyed in the first book and cranked it up--
The characters(those still left) the architects and the cosmic outside threat are all here and move through a story that feels less like a sequel in the traditional sense and more like a book that expands on elements already established in the first book.
Thanks so much to #netgalley, #orbitbooks, and #adriantchaikovsky for the ARC of #eyesofthevoid.

Tchaikovsky is as good at writing SF, as he is at writing fantasy. Maybe even better. Not only does he have good characters, but he gets the big ideas, the way "Three Body Problem" did (but without the characters). So we have a future history on a grand scale, and believable characters, too. That's why the man gets the awards and five stars from me,

Thank you to the publisher, Orbit Books, and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Following the second battle of Berlenhof, the Architects are indubitably back and causing chaos as they begin to destroy world after world. Where in the previous war, the presence of Originator artifacts on a world provided a certain amount of protection, the Architects seem to have found a way to circumvent its protection. Every planet a target and the various groups of humans, aliens and other species are thrown into chaos as they argue about how to combat the threat. Idris, who has spent his life running away from the memories of the first war, is very much in demand to get back on the front lines as his Intermediary abilities, combined with the discovery he made about the Architects at Berlenhof, may be the only ray of hope. As various factions make a play for power in the chaotic political situation that has resulted, Idris and his allies search for a weapon that can repel the Architects, but the answer may not be what they expected.

I picked up the first book of this series, Shards of Earth, pretty much because I was in the mood for a sci-fi novel at the time and it sounded interesting, but I certainly didn’t expect to get so invested in this story! I’ve been counting down the days to this sequel and was so excited to be approved for an eARC. In some ways, I liked this book much better than the first, because so much of the world building was in place and things were making sense right from the beginning. This story is set in a really complex world that continued to expand in this installment – something I was very impressed by given how much else was going on at the same time between fighting the Architects, finding a weapon, various factions going to war with each other, some truly intriguing political scheming on all sides and much more. I was especially glad for both the very useful recap of book one that was included, and also the glossary of sorts that was a great refresher on the many species, blocs and characters involved.

At over 600 pages, Eyes of the Void was no light read. The pacing too, was significantly slower, but there was just so much going on and I was so engrossed that I didn’t struggle with it at all. Not to mention that if it had been any faster, I would have probably lost the thread of the plot and ended up horribly confused. This book certainly managed to avoid the typical second book problem areas and has provided a solid storyline going into book three while developing both the world and characters. The many character perspectives provided a well rounded look at the brewing war from all angles and everyone who has a stake in ongoing matters. Their loyalties and agendas were constantly shifting which made for not only a fascinating read but also rendered something of a mystery element to the whole thing in my opinion that kept me at the edge of my seat wondering what the next twist would be and what repercussions that might have. The crew of the Vulture God remained my favorite of the lot, a group of such diverse personalities and motives, yet united in a single goal and they were as marvellous and entertaining as ever. They often injected some sarcasm or moments of humour into the otherwise serious narrative that effectively broke up tense moments and made the dialogue a lot of fun to follow too.

There was just one little thing I didn’t like about this sequel. This series is supposed to be a trilogy, and I’m rather annoyed with the reveal at the close of this book. It just wasn’t big enough given all the buildup throughout the story, and we’re going into book 3 without the crucial question answered – who is controlling the Architects and giving them orders to carve up planets? I really expected this book to close with that revelation and give a better idea of what the final confrontation, so to speak, will look like.

Overall, this series continues to be an amazing space opera and I can’t wait to see how this story ends! Book 3 is going to be one of my most anticipated titles for next year – or atleast I hope it’s next year. I don’t think I can manage to wait any longer than that! Though it’s not one of the genres I pick up too frequently, this series is more or less setting the standard for what I’m beginning to expect in sci-fi novels and I’m hoping to try the other books by this author soon. Highly recommended!

Adrian Tchaikovsky can be counted on to provide consistently good quality books at such a speed that I suspect he’s either a conglomerate of writers or a clone army — or maybe he’s just really likes what he does and is very good at it. No, you know what — it *must* be the clone army thing.

In any case, “Eyes of the Void” is an excellent follow-up to last year’s British Science Fiction Award-winning “Shards of Earth”, fully convincing me that despite his amazing versatility Tchaikovsky really shines in science fiction realm. It’s a space opera, like its predecessor, and despite including the genre staples that give it a genre classic feel it still manages to remain clever, fresh, gripping and decidedly not silly. A ragtag crew of misfits in space, interstellar travel, wars, politics, space gangsters, alien cultists, AI — you name it — all manage to create quite a delicious science fiction concoction here.

“We’re basically standing at the edge of a raw wound between unspace and the real.”

In the face of continued slow destruction of planets and lives by mysterious moon-sized Architects humanity - of fragging course! - has not banded together. Instead it’s business as usual, from petty squabbles to all-out war between humanity’s largest factions, because humans often lack the vision of the bigger picture (“The Architects weren’t only back, they were making up for lost time, losing patience with the universe.”) And our ragtag team on the scavenger ship The Vulture God, having pissed off almost anyone with any semblance of power in the first book, found temporary reprieve among the Parthenon, being viewed as traitors to the greater human race in the meantime. But the reprieve doesn’t last for long as there is not only the continued deadly menace of the Architects but also the continuing squabbles over who gets to “own” Idris Telemmier, an Intermediary whose nature allows him to pilot through Unspace as well as (almost) communicate with the Architects — but doesn’t protect him from being constantly used and kidnapped.

“He was the canary in the mine, and you always brought the canary. Nobody cared that the canary didn’t much enjoy its job and would maybe like to be doing something else.”

And the Originator ruins on a planet from hell may just hold enough clues to the mystery of the Architects and the universe itself.

“Then he knew. And it wasn’t what he’d thought. He felt leaden and bitter, even as Ahab exulted that the universe had finally given up its secrets.”

Yes, it’s a middle book in the series that will not give too many answers and that sets up the events to come, but once again it wraps up its storyline nicely, all while continuing wonderful worldbuilding and interesting characters. And while it leaves me wanting more (I need all the answers about the universe, and I want them now! “42” is not a satisfying answer, dammit!) I’m very satisfied with the journey it took me on.

“He didn’t want to take the war to the Architects. He didn’t want to be any part of what might be genocide. But neither the universe nor the war was done with him yet.

4.5 stars, happily rounding up.
—————

Thanks to NetGalley and Orbit Books for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Things are not going well when the second book in The Final Architecture series, Eyes of the Void, opens. In Shards of Earth, we learned the Architects were themselves slaves, forced to destroy worlds. But the contact Idris Telemer made with the Architect isn’t stopping the destruction of planets and ships.

Idris is with the Partheni, trying to find a strain of the clones that can be made into Intermediaries without the coercion and the high death rate in the Hugh (Council of Humans) program. Solace is traveling with the Vulture God crew and they are trying to find information. The Nativists are sure the Partheni are worse than the Architects. Things that were once thought true are not anymore, if they ever were.

Second books in an ongoing series are hard to talk about because it’s hard not to spoil the first book, and there’s a lot unresolved. Eyes of the Void does what a middle book is supposed to do. It advances the plot, reveals new information, ratchets up the stakes, and sets up the conclusion.

Tchaikovsky does such a great job of immersing us in characters and situations that feel like they exist beyond the bounds of the page. From passages of contemplation to bursts of action, the plot feels lived in. I enjoy the characters so much. Idris is the most important human in the universe, but so many people and institutions see him only as a commodity. The crew of the Vulture God, Solace, and even Haever Mundy are doing their best with what they have as alliances and allegiances shift. They don’t lose track of what’s at stake – all of life, human and alien, in the universe. There were so many moments when I said, “Oh sh*t” out loud while I was reading. I’m really looking forward to Lords of Uncreation next year.

CW: lots of violence and death, a religious cult, public whipping, war, betrayal

I received this as an advance reader copy from Orbit Books via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.

I have decided to DNF this book. I didn't et very far into it, but I know that if I force myself to push through, I won't enjoy it like I did the first one. I don't feel connected to the characters in this one, and that's my fault and not at all the author or the book itself. I will come back to this one in the future.

This was an excellent book, because that’s all Adrian Tchaikovsky writes. But it also left me extremely dissatisfied. It’s very much a middle book of a series; we get many more clues, but precious few answers.

Part of what frustrated me about this book is what I will call the “Mass Effect effect.” Why are all of these people so fixated on their petty politicking when there are literal world-destroying monsters running around? I know it’s very much human nature, but I still wanted to take a bunch of these people and bonk their heads together until they got some perspective.

Suffice it to say, humanity isn’t exactly banding together in the face of the return of the Architects.

This story picks up right where *Shards of Earth* left off, with Idris and the rest of the crew of the *Vulture God* with the Parthenon, helping them begin their own Intermediary program. The politics start up right away; Idris is very much setting the stage for an intra-humanity power struggle here. Meanwhile the Hiver Assembly is also involved, and Agent Mundy & Mordant House and other parts of the Council of Human Interest are each playing their own game, and who the hell knows what the Hegemony is up to (to say nothing of the Unspeakable Aklu, the Razor and the Hook).

It’s exciting, fast-paced, and well-written, because Tchaikovsky doesn’t write bad books. But I also didn’t get many answers to the questions I really wanted to know. What’s up with Architects? What’s driving them? What’s the *thing* watching in unspace? Who were the Originators? Where did they go? I know more about all of these things, but I don’t know enough about any of them. So all there is to do, I suppose, is read book 3 when it comes out. Hopefully very soon.

Bingo categories: Set in Space [Hard Mode]; Published in 2022; Weird Ecology [Hard Mode]. (a note on using it for Weird Ecology: about 25% of the book takes place on a planet with very weird ecology, and it’s the climactic quarter so it’s certainly a significant part of the book, but it might be stretching things a bit.)

Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Big scope space opera written by one of my favorite modern authors -- and he is doing a fantastic job yet again.

The first book laid out a great number of weird and fascinating alien species with humans just being one of many, combined with gigantic Architects that go about plopping into real space to completely transform planets into weird sculptures, much to the mind-blowing terror of the millions of people or intelligent species living there.

We followed the crew of the salvage ship Vulture God and barely scraped by one such horrifying encounter with a reveal that the big bad is not, indeed, the Architects, but something else that drove them.

And then there are the Originators, another huge mystery that wraps up all the intelligent species in yet another conundrum.

Of course, that hardly describes the USUAL and NORMAL problems of opportunistic species taking advantage of the chaos to start interstellar wars and the like, but here we are.


And nothing quite beats the terrified scrambling of so many intelligent species with all the collateral damage that implies. It makes for a truly excellent space opera. I look forward to following all these, my favorite characters from the Vulture God and their quest to survive. :)

In many ways, Eyes of the Void is simply a continuation of the story started by Adrian Tchaikovsky in one of our top books of 2021, Shards of Earth. Because of this, this review is really going to just boil down to “yea, it's still great, and you should still read it” with some additional commentary sprinkled in. If you have no idea what Shards of Earth is, you are in luck as I will once again run you through the premise.

Fresh off the end of my favorite space opera, The Expanse, a new giant sci-fi political thriller has appeared to fill the void. With two very strong novels out so far, The Final Architecture is a series that packs so much content into its many pages that it overflows like an endless chalice. I find myself still thinking about my read months later.

Shards of Earth is placed in a distant future in which we have taken the galactic stage and met a number of other alien species. Things are going well until planet-sized alien Architects start showing up and turning entire planets into modern sculptures with cosmic power – killing everyone on them. Most of the sentient species band together to try to stop these colossal arbiters of death, but nothing seems to be able to scratch them. Little progress is made fighting until a breakthrough of a secret psychic conditioning experiment leads to the creation of “Ints.” These ESP-ers could communicate, mind-to-mind, with the enemy. Then their alien aggressors, the Architects, simply disappeared.

In addition to being able to communicate with Architects, a skill no longer in demand, the Ints have an unparalleled understanding of movement through space, making them the greatest pilots alive – and there are very few of them left from the war. Our story follows a number of POVs after the war with the Architects but centers on a retired Int named Idris that many factions are fighting over. They all want to recruit him to be their pet pilot while he tries to carve out an independent life on a scavenger ship called the Vulture God. When the crew makes a strange discovery that might herald the return of the dreaded Architects, things begin to heat up.

After the events of book one, Eyes of the Void is about looking forward and trying to regain some agency. I know that sounds vague and handwavey, but bear with me. Shards is a book about lacking control, and how these Lovecraftian aliens profoundly changed any sense of security that sentient life has in Tchaikovsky’s world. Eyes is about action, plans, and doing something about it. All the key players from book one return, but now they are no longer content to wait for the Architects to come back. They want to find a way to stop being on the defense, stop always reacting, and actually have some direction in their fate. This comes in many forms. Some try to innovate existing strategies, some stop trying to protect what they have in order to recklessly attack back, some decide to flee everything altogether, and some choose to gaze into the abyss and come to understand the bigger picture. The entire book feels like a clear natural next step for the series and the books don’t really feel self-contained. The trilogy is likely going to read like one enormous book.

All the things I loved about Shards are still here. The cast is best in class, with each faction being stuffed to the gills with colorful protagonists, antagonists, and supporting characters. There is an awesome amount of character evolution in the second book as Tchaikovsky tracks the expansion of more than a dozen changing character identities. The world is still very fleshed out and filled with eldritch horrors that baffle the imagination. The plot is compelling and the mysteries beg to be solved. The sole complaint I have about Eyes of the Void is that the pacing is uneven. There were a few sections that felt noticeably slower and the book had less of a relentless onslaught of punches compared to book one, and there was some mildly repetitive exposition that could have been trimmed here or there.

Tchaikovsky knows what he is doing, and I am convinced that this will be the next big science fiction thing and it will probably get some sort of massive adaptation. Read it, it is worth your time.

Rating: Eyes of the Void - 9.5/10
-Andrew