I gladly accepted the opportunity to read Lords of Uncreation as an ARC! It's a phenomenal ending to a great trilogy.

I have been a fan of Tchaikovsky for years. His stories feature incredibly innovative settings, characters and narratives and it is easy to get lost in the worlds that he builds. No one in the genre builds unique, detailed and bizarre worlds like Adrian Tchaikovsky. I developed a particular affinity for the Final Architecture series; this series, set among the stars, has a mind-blowing cast of alien species, political intrigue, and scientific advances. While this series has been described as a "space opera", it needs to be recognized as THE space opera of our time.

In Lords of Uncreation, the final novel in the Final Architecture trilogy, Tchaikovsky sets to pull together all of the narrative strings into a neat bundle. I enjoyed the split narrative which told the story from a variety of perspectives, though it would have been nice to see the world through the eyes/limbs/mucus membranes of some of the more exotic species like the Essiel. Although, maybe they work best as truly alien beings because we CAN'T comprehend how they perceive the world. Some individuals, who previously enjoyed more of a supporting role, have a much larger narrative role. It is a bittersweet compromise as familiar characters like Solace give space to characters like Olli. Our familiar characters ARE present, it's just that some previous supporting cast are given a much larger role.

I cannot overstate how rich the universe of Final Architecture is. The level of detail was almost too much to fully take in and I know I could read again (and again) and come away with things I missed the first time. In Lords of Uncreation, there is not a tremendous amount of explanation or new character development; you HAVE to enter this book having read the others in the series. If you don't, there is much of the narrative (including the motivation of characters) that just simply will not make sense. This is not a standalone novel by any means.

The story maintains a high level of drama, action and humour that readers have come to expect, complete with a thorough dive into futuristic technology and ethical/philosophical quandaries. The story did bog down a bit in the second half, with a repetitive jaunt through space/unreal. I was skeptical that Tchaikovsky would be able to succinctly wrap up the trilogy in one book; while it wasn't how I envisioned things coming together, it did make sense in the end.

If you've been a fan of the Final Architecture series, the question should not be IF you are going to read Lords of Uncreation; the question is WHEN are you going to read it? If you haven't read the first two books, please start with Shards of Earth and Eyes of the Void before you tackle this one. You'll be glad that you did.

Please not that while none of the spoilers I mention are particularly notable, there will be spoilers in this review. This is also not my most generous of reviews, and is more of a rant about what the series could have been than what it was:

***

When I originally reviewed Shards of Earth as unequivocally my favourite books of 2021, I did mention that there was a little too much action that seemed padding and unnecessarily during the Broken Harvest section. I similarly found this to a lesser extent in Eyes of the Void, but I had bigger issues with the lack of characterization in the first half of that novel.

It is unfortunate to me that I have to reiterate both negatives but more egregiously towards the third and final of these novels. Narratively, I am satisfied, and the cosmic unknowability of the Originators and the Presence and all of Unspace was played perfectly and poetically and with enough distance and fear that I am satisfied with the universe Tchaikovsky built and the questions that it leaves me about the Essiel and the world after the Architects.

But this novel's first half is entirely unnecessary padding that absolutely bored me to tears. It is action scene after action scene after action scene, space battle after space battle, with an occasional hand-to-hand battle thrown in for good measure. It is pointless to the rest of the novel and story; it treads THE EXACT SAME GROUND as the second half of Eyes of the Void. It is another long battle against the Ark Ship faction conspiracy that was finished in the last book, and of which nothing new happens except some players that could have just expired are wiped off the board.

But worse, the characterization is atrocious. The entire first half of the book is predicated on Olli wanting to genocide the Parthenon. Her anger at the Parthenon was addressed in the previous books, but for some reason her entire personality changes to become a genocidal maniac who starts screaming conspiracies for eighty pages, causing a bloody war, and then she REGRETS it in a single sentence. It is then never touched again. Then Olli is made a hero for the rest of the book through Essiel magic and gets to live a happy lesbian life at the end. But what does Olli think of this? Nothing, really, she kind of just goes along with it, and we never get anything deeper than quips. It's an atrocious arc for a character I praised Tchaikovsky for writing in the first book as a justifiably righteous pain in the ass. Here she's a blank quip machine that thinks genocide is good.

The other issue and one I didn't touch in previous reviews but felt ambivalent about: Kris. I do not find Kris interesting. She is framed as the main character of this book despite the fact that she... doesn't do anything. She is captuerd and becomes a spy-on-the-inside against her friends but nothing comes of that except to get her on the same ship as her friends so she can escape. We also never see her struggle with spying on her friends or what information she has to struggle with to give or not give her captures. After that, she thinks heavily about Idris, and she's there for all the big moments where Idris is finally believed by the scientists and Ints on the Eye, and she is the chapters VOICE during those moments.... but it is Solace that believes him and speaks in defence of him... and it is Jaine that is his rock in real space while Solace and him are in Unspace.

She even is a bitter person at the reunion at the end because her friends are more successful than her. Which is a fine characteristic in theory that I would appreciate but seems to come out of nowhere and is part of this weird attempt to make her more of a main character than she is. This would have worked if there had been *any* use of her legal and diplomatic skills, but she is just... there, but not really there or important or relevant to any of the story.

I have more complaints, about how long and almost meta-purposefully everyone ignores Idris so that there can be more action scenes, how characters aren't mourned for for more than a second, but... all my complaints aside, I am generally satisfied with how the story concluded. I would find it immensely difficult now to recommend this series to anyone now, unlike when I first read the first book. It has a particular flavour of space-action that is not what I enjoy - as you can clearly tell. I don't think it's bad, it just became and focused on the wrong things in a series I thought would be character driven and instead was meant to be a huge action series instead.

[Blurb goes here]

First, let me clear the air: Adrian Tchaikovsky is one of my favorite authors. In my humble opinion, and I know it's in bad form to even whisper it: he IS this generation's best sci-fi writer. Again, in my humble opinion. I won't go as far as to compare him with the all-time great ones because I don't want to be killed in my sleep.

Now on to the story.

Idris Telemmier is an Intermediary. You see, fifty years ago, there was a war we had no chance of winning. Moon-sized crystal-like entities turned up in the solar system, creating artworks from habitable planets, killing all life. These 'beings' were called 'Architects.'

Humans created the Intermediary program to make people like Idris through gruesome surgical operations. The ten percent that survived were unleashed onto the Architects. Idris was one of the few who got through to the planet-sized monster and convinced it to leave the sentient species alone.

Fifty years later, Idris hasn't aged, he's unable to sleep, and he's a twitchy fellow, all side effects from him being an Int. He's now part of a salvage crew (misfits who found a family inside the Vulture God) since only Ints are able to travel through unspace.

While on a rescue mission, the Vulture God finds a ship that has been distorted to the Architects' liking. Are the Architects back? Or is this some ploy to undermine humanity?

With alien cultures to spare, different and exciting government conspiracies, gangsters, and various religious beliefs, Tchaikovsky builds one of the most stunning space operas I have read to date.

All characters are greatly defined and continue evolving all throughout the series.

The technology is there to be used as a tool, with no over-complicated explanation as to what goes where; the author explains it clearly enough for the reader to understand how it works without the latter needing more information.

This interstellar battle unites species against a common enemy, one that cannot tolerate other intelligent life forms inhabiting space.

I'm at a loss for words. Safe to say that this is a marvelous series. One that no sci-fi fan would like to miss!

Thank you for the advanced copy!

Summary:
This is the third and final book in the ‘The Final Architecture’ series. Events in this book pick up where they left off in the last.

Positives:
+ Junior. There needs to be epic art of junior plastered all over everything so I can celebrate a new favorite sci-fi thing.
+ Can we talk about how freaking amazing all these alien species and cultures and worlds and just NEW imaginings this book inspires? Reading this series is like stumbling across the joy of reading all over again; opening up every possibility. I love that even through the last book in the series you are still getting MORE glimpse of new and exciting things.
+ The humor. The humor is so freaking amazingly on point. You can be juggling your feelings of hope and fear for your favorite characters and boom, just the most wry and fantastic line that drags an undignified cackle out of you.

Final Thoughts:
Holy crap, this book. THIS BOOK. I LOVE this book. This book is like being slapped in the face with whatever thing inspires the most joy in you all at once, from various angles, and then with a bunch of things you didn't realize inspire joy within you. I am legit crying as I am writing this because the book was wonderful. It was a perfect ending. Not what I would have expected or even have hoped for, but that's what makes it all the more amazing. HOW CAN ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY DO THIS OVER AND OVER WITH HIS BOOKS. Favorite space opera, hands down; no competition.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Lords of Uncreation is the third and final volume of the Final Architecture series, including Shards of Earth and Eyes of the Void. What draws me most to this series are the amazing descriptions of the encounters of the Intermediary Idris Telemmier with the creatures of unspace, a level of space beneath the real where its visitors aren’t even real anymore. Lords of Uncreation is the triumph of the series, when so many details snap into focus, and I get awed all over again at the scope and depth of Tchaikovsky’s imagination.

To summarize briefly, the crystalline, moon-sized Architects, that once destroyed Earth by twisting it into strangely artistic shapes, wiping out all living things that had not escaped into space, returned after decades of absence in Shards of Earth. Humanity and other more advanced species have found only one tool of resistance in the surgically or genetically modified minds of humans known as Intermediaries, or Ints. They, especially the most gifted one of them, Idris Telemmier, have been able to contact the minds of the Architects to deflect them from their murderous purpose or at least delay them to give residents of planets more time to escape.

The scientists and politicians controlling the Ints hope to destroy the Architects where they live in the mysterious world of unspace. But Idris has sensed another entity in unspace that conceals further secrets, and he suspects the Architects are only tools of that force. He has come to believe that killing the Architects would be a useless genocide. He wants to track down the true source of the assault on sentient life, but no one agrees with him. As all this is going on, factions among humans and other species, who have temporarily made peace to fight a greater enemy, may be preparing to resume hostilities.

.......
We follow Idris as he moves step by step more deeply into unspace and sees and understands more and more of its structure. It is this steady advance that convinces him the Architects are only the tools or slaves of another more powerful force that has bent them to its will and that wants to destroy all traces of sentient life from the universe. But why? What is it that sentient beings are doing that arouses the wrath of that deeper force? These are the questions Tchaikovsky and his characters grapple with and slowly discover in this final and immensely satisfying conclusion to his trilogy.

..........
Lords of Uncreation portrays humanity in the fullness of its folly and its warmth, giving a larger meaning to the single-minded drive of Idris into the unknown. We follow this complex story through multiple points of view, and Tchaikovsky manages to humanize and keep us interested in even the worst characters who want to fight off most of humanity to keep alive their narrow circle of committed fascists and brutal warlords. The division of the narrative into so many strands does make it hard to focus at times, and I found myself skimming some of the political machinations in order to follow closely every part of Idris’ investigation of unspace. Yet the deeper meaning and value of his search for answers only becomes clear in relation to the war-torn universe he is trying to save. Tchaikovsky has created a remarkable trilogy that repays close reading and captures the fullness of the worlds we live in and the choices we are forced to make.

Once again the crew of the Vulture God find themselves at the heart of the conflict with the Architects. The threat on everyone’s doorstep. The nightmare and destroyer of worlds. Idris, one of the last Intermediaries, might be the only one who can give them a chance.

Lords of Uncreation is the third and final installment of The Final Architecture series. This was a fantastic series, with a conclusion that brought me close to tears. I’ll leave it up to you to find out whether they were happy or sad tears.

I was given a free eARC copy of this book on NetGalley from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Lords of Uncreation is one of my most anticipated books of the year. Adrian Tchaikovsky is a master and The Final Architecture series is such a joy to read. And when I say it’s a joy to read, I do not mean it is fluffy or happy. It is not. But the writing is immersive and gripping and the smallest detail is so well considered. Tchaikovsky pulls it all together and gives us as happy an ending as we could expect.

We open with Andecka Tal Mar a Hugh (Human Council) created Intermediary trying to buy time for the inhabitants of a planet to escape as an Architect slowly approaches. Just before she makes contact with the Architect’s mind, a Partheni warship pops in from unspace with a lab grown Partheni Intermediary there to help. They are successful and Tchaikovsky has thrown us back into his messy, chaotic, and gritty universe. Andecka resents Cognoscenti Intermediary Grave, who didn’t have to go through a brutal surgery and chemical treatment to become an Int, but also feels bound to her because they both understand the high cost of trying to convince an Architect to not sculpt a planet into a piece of uninhabitable art.

All the factions we were getting to know in the first two books are still not cooperating (except for when they do).

Well that’s an achievement, Ollie considered. Getting Nativists and Partheni pissed at you at the same time. Something to go on the tombstone.

Anyone who is living through this current time will recognize the way the very rich are trying to protect themselves and only themselves, factions with a common interest in survival are unable to work together because they are more concerned with the their differences, and no one is listening to the actual experts. Some humans are overly concerned with how to define what it is to be human, and people with power and wealth are quite ready to enslave, grind up and discard others for the benefit of only the rich. The Uskaros want to leash (enslave) Idris long before the Architects reappear, giving lie to whatever they say about “for the greater good.”

The interspecies crew of The Vulture God, plus Haever Mundy (a human spy), contingents of various aliens, including the mysterious Ash, have to work against everyone to save everyone. I just…love these characters. They’ve had the absolute snot kicked out of them over the course of the series. Tchaikovsky gives his characters so much life and individuality that every loss leaves a mark. Empathy and cooperation, even with beings we can never fully understand, saves the universe, not military might.

CW: mass death, violence, mental and physical torture, enslavement and threats of enslavement.

I received this as an advance reader copy from Orbit books and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.

3 words: Space Opera Trilogy

If you enjoyed the first two installments in this series, you will be happy to know that Tchaikovsky doesn't fumble it in the endzone. The conclusion is damn near perfect. This series really brings the high-stakes drama and expansive world-building to an amazing space epic. It's just *chef's kiss* wonderful. I don't want to give to much away so just take my word for it and read it. If you haven't even started the series, just go do it. You will enjoy it.

I’d read 6 more of these, if Tchaikovsky wanted to write them.

Hi! We’re about two weeks off from release, which is when reviews are supposed to drop (I believe). I’d hoped to reread the whole trilogy before organizing my thoughts—didn’t happen, c’est le c’est. But, I think the rating here speaks for itself.

I really enjoyed this final installation, it does a good job responding to and wrapping up the many elements that we are introduced to in the first two books. As I alluded to, I love the way Tchaikovsky frames this world, and I would be hard pressed to feel sick of it.

Plot wise, by some elements there are places this book takes us that I knew were inevitable going in, but it doesn’t take away from the journey. I think an argument could be made for a bit of an uneven distribution of progression in this one (ie: there’s a plot with the partheni that just sort of shows up and then falls away). In this sense, the book is almost split into portions, with the beginning, middle, and end, having somewhat discrete focuses. It’s noticeable, but wasn’t bothersome.

Character: shout out to Olli, who really shined in ways I wasn’t expecting in this installment (deserved). In my last review I mentioned not being sure where we were taking Solace—I felt that was wrapped up in a fitting and believable way for the character (leaving room for more growth and the future). Kris took a little bit more of a backseat but I still loved seeing her. Havaer was Havaer. We get a new POV in this book that did…. deaden some moments for me—character utilizes a trope that if you’ve read other Tchaikovsky’s you will be familiar. I was initially exhausted just to have encountered it, but it does have it’s place. Idris, I literally can’t imagine having anything bad to say about him.

Think that’s all I can say without getting into the weeds (which no one wants). Tchaikovsky manages to wrap this up in a way that feels complete, without being a static end for the world and characters per se. It feels as though every aspect will continue living past our little window into the world, which in my mind is tantamount to success in an sff trilogy.

*received an advanced reader copy

This is one of the best ends to a trilogy that I have read. I loved this series since the start and was absolutely thrilled when I was given an arc. This series has a great cast of characters and so incredibly thought provoking that you don't even feel the length of the pages. This is definitely a series I will be rereading.

I want to thank Netgalley and Orbit for providing me an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Received an advanced copy for review. Wonderfully satisfying conclusion to an epic trilogy. Well plotted throughout,. Not to spoil anything, but if you're wondering about climactic payoff - it delivers. Endearing character development throughout the trilogy (and continued here). Well worth reading.

As always with the review of the final book of a series, the burning question is: does the book stick the landing? Is the journey worth it? Happy to say that for the Final Architecture the answer is a resounding “Yes!”

Most people here have read books 1 and 2, so I’m going to assume you know the premise of the series and aren’t really looking for the sell.

I found the first half of the book rather slow, to be honest. It was mostly focused on squabbles among the assorted human and human-adjacent factions. There wasn’t anything wrong with it; it just wasn’t what I wanted. Yes yes, the nobles from Magda are bastards, there are competing factions within the Hugh, let’s just get on with the Architects, please.

Which we do, for the second half of the book, and I had a great deal of trouble putting the book down.

So there are two big challenges in any story dealing with eldritch horrors from beyond space and time. One is the problem of explaining the unexplainable. A balance has to be struck between providing enough explanation for the readers to be satisfied but leaving enough unknown to preserve the mystery. The other is providing a way for our relatively mundane protagonists to fight back without straining credulity. Happy to report that Tchaikovsky manages to pull off both. There’s a good ending for the story, and the characters get endings that all feel well-earned.

All in all, another good one from one of my favorite authors.

This was a fantastic conclusion to the series! Tchaikovsky has quickly become one of my favorite authors and I look forward to reading anything that he comes out with.

The Architect series has such a number of deep storylines and themes that run throughout, making you question your understanding and beliefs in what may be occurring. It was a fitting if not sad conclusion for Idris and his internal struggles he has been fighting with since the beginning of the series.

I would love to explore this world more through the eyes of others in the books and would be an immediate buy if something like that were to be written.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced copies.

I think I got advanced copies of all three of these books, and it's been an absolute blast. Before this, I had read a single standalone flintlock fantasy book by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Now, I think he's in my top 5 favorite authors? This series has been incredible and introduced me to his Children of Time and the follow ups of that wonderful book as well.

Anyways, the actual book.

It's so good. It's a really good continuation of the series, with the same kind of gritty spacer feel with huge fantastic backdrops and interesting characters.

I love the problem of the Architects being explored more and fleshed out, I love the character arcs and having them fall into specific roles as we get closer to the climax, and I love the imaginative way that Tchaikovsky describes unspace and the Ints and the monstrous horrors of space exploration and species interaction.

I am supremely satisfied with the ending, and don't want to say anything about it.

Gah, I am so grateful that I found this series!

An easy high-rating. Tchaikovsky always creates interesting characters and situations with some complexity that keeps things real and/or interesting. Good stuff.

Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!

What can I say differently about this book compared to what I’ve said about other Tchaikovsky books? It’s just as good and his other works and might have taken the top place to me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Orbit for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Well, the Final Architecture trilogy is over, and with Lords of Uncreation, Tchaikovsky manages to wrap up the story of the Vulture God and its crew satisfyingly, if not always neatly.

This book picks up immediately from where Eyes of the Void left off, and gets straight into the action, making sure to remind us what’s at stake if the threat to humanity cannot be dealt with—as well as what it’s like to deal with all the Unspace-weirdness associated with being an Intermediary. From here, the pace stays fairly high and the writing extremely engaging.

Some light spoilers throughout the rest, so be advised.

One of my few issues with the previous two novels was that it felt like some of the POV characters had somewhat surface-level characterization, and were more often *described* as something than shown to *act* in a certain way. While this book by no means is immune to that problem, it confronts it in some ways by giving a large portion of the POV over to Olli, who provides much-needed perspective on what life is like in the Colonies outside the research efforts on the Eye. In fact, Olli might actually be my favorite character in the book—or at least the character who gets the most satisfying arc, in my opinion. Her and Kit’s realspace activities during the second half of the story were consistently engaging.

Despite certain individual plot threads always remaining interesting, though, Lords of Uncreation does unfortunately stumble a bit with its pacing in that same second half. Things are moving along briskly, there are some fantastically tense battles for survival…then the story abruptly pumps the breaks. The decision to have some of the central cast exist at a remove aboard the Eye is a bold one, and one that I really enjoyed, but the reason Olli and Kit’s travels across the Colonies are so engaging is because a lot of the Unspace-weirdness happening contemporaneously is bogged down with repeated discussions over how best to deal with the Architect threat, and explanations of physics that are, even for a trilogy in which wonky and vague physics play a major role, a bit *convenient* for my tastes. This doesn’t last forever, and it by no means isn’t enjoyable in its own way, but it is a noticeable departure from the pacing of the first half to be worth mentioning. Idris also becomes a bit one-note/one-trait at this point (then again, he kind of always has been), and it starts to become repetitive waiting for an inevitable shift in circumstances to allow the endgame to begin. This relative stagnation within Idris is later acknowledged by Tchaikovsky, however, and is handled beautifully as the story reaches its close.

How do I feel about the ultimate fate of the Colonies, the Architects, and the lovely crew of the Vulture God? I think that events were wrapped up about as satisfyingly as they could have been. With any trilogy as dense as this, and with science as deliberately vague as that of Unspace, there will always be some questions left unanswered and paths left unfollowed, and I’m not bothered by either of those here. I felt a surprising emotional resonance in the last few chapters—much more so than I had been expecting—especially with a perfectly-placed glimpse of how the world (in metaphorical terms) has changed after the main events of the story.

Tchaikovsky nails it again. 5/5.

This is the final installment of the Final Architecture trilogy and it pretty much maintains the quality of world building and character development found through the work since the beginning. In fact, there has once of the best depictions of diverse [and at times enigmatic] alien cultures that I have ever encountered (along with the subsequent political drama between them). Here we rejoin Idris, Solace and company while they deal with suspicion, corruption, hubris and betrayal to solve the problem of the Architects permanently … with Idris fighting a one man crusade to reveal the “man behind the curtain” in order to avoid a xenocide. However, despite all of the great things in here, the story did suffer from a few pacing problems where parts of the story started to drag as it dived into details and character interactions that at times seem somewhat superfluous … and I would put it aside for a time before returning to it. I would probably enjoy it better as an audible. Still, trilogy as a whole was excellent and if well with the effort.

I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

#LordsOfUncreation #TheFinalArchitecture #NetGalley

While this was an amazing conclusion to a wonderful series, I'm almost sad it has ended. There were so many interesting alien races and cultures to explore and so many characters with interesting stories that I would definitely love to read more about in the future.

Tchaikovsky proves book after book that he is a master of presenting unique sci-fi worlds that both seem alien but like they have a basis in science and are something I can see existing in the universe. Looking forward to reading anything he writes in the future.

Absolutely amazing. I rated the first two books four stars, but really – five stars for this epic series, and five stars for this conclusion which may well be my favourite book of the three. One of the best space opera series I’ve read in a long time, this series has so much I love: a wide range of alien species (including many who are not even close to humanoid), some diverse representation, epic space battles (so many space battles in this book!), a mysterious and terrifying enemy, high stakes, and a lot of fun, including a real sense of humour. A solid, satisfying conclusion to a fantastic series – highly recommend.
Like the first book, this one also includes indexes of characters, worlds, species, and ships, and a timeline; additionally, the book begins with a very brief "The Story So Far” – this is absolutely the kind of series where these inclusions are vital, particularly if you’re not reading the series all in one go.

Thank you Orbit Books & NetGalley for providing an ARC of this title.

Content warnings: violence, gun violence, death, war, speciesism, xenophobia, grief, injury detail, enslavement, relatively minor body horror