Adrian Tchaikovsky has rapidly become one of my favourite authors over the last couple of years. For someone who churns out books at an incredible rate, I’m amazed that they’re even remotely good. Little right do they have to be so consistently brilliant.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be so surprising that his output is so high. In a recent blog, Tchaikovsky mentioned that he usually thrives in his writing and creativity during times of stress at the state of the world. In his words, it’s “a more sociable alternative to screaming out of the window”. When one looks at the way the world is at the present moment, no wonder the books keep coming.
A great deal of societal angst is channeled into Tchaikovsky’s newest novel Bear Head (Head of Zeus, 2021). I’m pleased to report that it continues his pattern for insightful and highly readable excellence.
Continuing on from 2018’s Dogs of War, the novel picks up the plot and themes a couple of decades later and advances it in interesting and satisfying ways. There is nothing truly original in its sci-fi concepts: personality uploads, technological upgrades to humans and animals, mind control. However, it all weaves together in a compelling plot which asks some big ethical and moral questions.
The character work is wonderful. There’s Honey, the academic bear, from the previous novel who spends most of the narrative trapped inside the brain/headgear of an unwilling host. There’s Jimmy, a no-luck drug addict geezer-type building the city of the future on Mars. There’s Thompson, a Trump-like figure who is something so much more haunting and sinister; the petulant child who has some strange incalculable influence over those around him. There’s his PA, who grapples with a sense of her own identity and will, which she has given up for the job.
I reckon the book is enough to stand by itself, but I’d definitely recommend reading Dogs of War first. I can’t wait for the sequel; knowing Tchaikovsky, it won’t be long in coming.
Also coming soon from Tchaikovsky is One Day All This Will Be Yours (Solaris, 4th Mar. 2021). It’s a short, fast-moving novella, yet ambitious in its scope. Some very big time travel concepts are thrown about with enough detail to keep you thinking about it too much without being confusing, serving the barmy plot well.
The story is entirely told from the main character’s point of view in a way that reminded me of Jimmy’s narration in Bear Head. He’s a terrible person, yet it’s endlessly entertaining to follow him in his desperate attempts to avoid other people and create a perfect place at the end of time with a population of one. Things become difficult when he discovers he may be destined to spawn a sterile utopia which disgusts him.
There is lots of ridiculous fun to be had here, for example a Bill and Ted-style race through history to find history’s most notorious individuals for a ludicrous fight to the death. For all its silliness, it does hint at some hefty themes, musing on the effects of technology and WMDs which, in this future world, have destroyed time and causality themselves. Does the future deserve to have the stain of humanity wiped from it? Perhaps the novella’s antihero is right to try and draw a line under humanity so that time can go on in peace.
I was on-track to give this book five stars until its abrupt ending, several chapters short of a satisfying resolution.
Here’s a quote which I think gives a good sense of the book: “She’s a trespasser and she’s come to ruin my life by somehow making me happy enough that I settle down with her and a found a gloriously twee society of facile w****** like Weldon and Smantha. And if that’s not a good enough reason to seek someone’s death, then I don’t know what is.” It’s nuts.
I’m really looking forward to further releases from Adrian Tchaikovsky this year: The Expert System’s Champion (Tordotcom, 26th Jan. 2021), Shards of Earth (Tor, 27th May 2021), which is the first in a new series, and a novella called Elder Race (Tordotcom, 16th Nov. 2021), listed on Amazon.
By my count that adds up to over 1500 pages of story-writing, going by Amazon’s count. Do let me know if there’s a tome or three that I’ve overlooked. I haven’t even mentioned the fact that he’s recently finished a first draft of Children of Memory (working title), the third in his wonderful and intense spider-octopus saga.
I, for one, am certainly hoping he manages to keep up this level of output; let the bad times roll!
Thank you to NetGalley for ARCs of these books, in exchange for honest reviews!
For Better or For Books 