Empire in Black and Gold

Having very much enjoyed Adrian Tchaikovsky's most recent SF novel, I decided to go back and tackle Empire in Black and Gold the first book in his brick-like Shadows of the Apt series. Blending the fantastical with elements from steampunk, the story is set in a world where humans have taken on insectile characteristics which grant them special abilities — their mystical ancestor arts — whilst also making the more or less able to use technology — ants and beetles are apt and can create wondrous new machines, whereas it is all spiders and mantises can do to comprehend a doorknob.

The action opens with Stenwold Maker, a young beetle-kinden, and a group of his revolutionary friends watching a force of Wasp-kinden — the titular Empire — overrunning the city of Myna. After some of them make a daring escape, the action jumps forward 17 years to find Stenwold, now middle-aged, ostensibly working as a historian in the city of Collegium whilst covertly running a network of spies intended to keep tabs on the expansionist wasps. Stenwold's current proteges, introduced via a short vignette showing college life, are his niece Che — short for Cheerwell, which she hates with a passion, — his ward Tynisa, an engineering student called Totho, and Salme Dien, a prince form the Dragonfly Commonweal.

The plot proper is kicked off by the arrival of a diplomatic delegation of lead by Thalric, the Wasp's own spymaster. After a crude attempt is made on Stenwold's life, he sends his students to the dubious safety of city of Helleron where, after an eventful dirigible ride that has shades of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade about it, they are immediately split up and find themselves in all sorts of separate entanglements. The bulk of the remaining story involves a quest to recover Cheerwell and Salme Dein, both of whom are taken prisoner by Thalric, and Stenwold's realisation, assisted by stolen logistical information, that the Wasps are about to start their much-delayed conquest of the Lowlands.

Although the story runs on a bit in places, Tchaikovsky is such a dab hand at characterisation that it's easy to overlook the uneven pacing of the main plot. Each of his principals is interesting in their own way — although poor Totho is a little on the dull side — while their rivalries and misunderstandings keep things interesting and add tension to the story. Thalric, who, as the principal antagonist, might, in less hands, have been a simple scenery-chewing villain, actually gets to display just as much depth and subtlety as the protagonists.

Thanks to the discursive nature of the narrative, we get to see a lot more of the world than we would do if Tchaikovsky took us straight from A to B. We get to see Tynisa's attempts to survive the criminal underworld of Helleron, something which sets her on a path of self discovery. Che and Salma, locked up in a Wasp slave caravan, get to see the underside of the empire, bringing the Roman elements into sharp focus; affable and distant Salme manages to fall in love while skeptical Che begins to develop various mystical abilities. Through his interactions with Che and her perceptive ability to put her finger on exactly what most troubles him, Thalric too comes doubt his dogged devotion to the empire and, increasingly, to suspect the motives of his fellow members of the Rekef, the Wasps' security service.

Despite it's length, Empire in Black and Gold felt like an easy and enjoyable read, with characters I enjoyed spending time with and a fascinatingly detailed world with its myriad different versions of humanity. I'm definitely looking forward to immersing myself in the sequels and given that there are nine similarly hefty volumes to follow this one, I don't think I'm going to be short of reading material for a while to come...