Shadows of the Apt

I realised last week that I hadn’t read Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shadows of the Apt series in several years. I thought I’d pick up the first book again just for a little light reading in-between other projects.

I’ve almost finished book 4 now, and my devouring of this world shows no signs of slowing. I had forgotten, dear readers, just how good this series is. Tchaikovsky is currently renowned for his weird sci-fi above all else, but Shadows of the Apt is one of the best epic fantasy series I have ever read.

To summarise the world itself: everybody is bugs. Well, every group of Insect-Kinden are human, but thanks to their close ancestral bonds with the giant insects that stalk their world – pretty much everything is insects, except for fish and horses – they all have inherent insect powers. Dragonflies can fly. Wasps can sting (with fireballs). Ants are all telepathic – but only with the other Ants of their own cities. Beetles endure. Right off the bat, the focus on insects draws you into this incredibly rich, slightly steampunk world.

Because that technological aspect is the other unique bit of worldbuilding: the division between Apt races, who can understand and build machines, and the Inapt, who… just can’t. There is an Old World in this universe, a high fantasy of heroes and magic, which was brought crashing down by a literal technological revolution. The Mantids are the greatest warriors ever to stalk the world – but they can’t open a locked door or fire a crossbow.

And into this divided world comes the great Empire of the Wasps, bent on conquering everything they can see, and against them stand the motley cities of Ants, Beetles, Flies and Spiders and all the other kinden – who of course all hate each other already. It’s up to a lowly Beetle to try and draw the world together against its would-be conquerors in whatever way he can.

I realise this is a very potted summary but honestly, there is so much in these books to talk about that it’s hard to choose what. The richness of this setting cannot be understated: Tchaikovsky has built dozens of entire civilisations, drawing from histories across the world, from the Roman-like Wasps to the Chinese-flavoured Dragonflies, and augmented it all with this fantastic insect aspect. Every kinden’s society is so well thought-out down to the architecture: Beetles build solid, low buildings, but Dragonflies build in wood and put the doors on the roof because they can all fly, for instance. The army of the Wasps isn’t just ‘here are loads of nasty Roman soldiers with fireballs’ – they have airborne infantry, and the fact that they’ve all got wings means that we can have steampunk paratroopers throwing themselves out of airships… while of course avoiding attack by gigantic dragonflies as beasts of war. The detail goes down to eating habits – beetle jerky instead of beef!

I cannot spare the time to wax too lyrically about this series today. I haven’t even started on the characters – maybe that’s a future post. But suffice it to say that this series had such an impact on me as a teenager that I wrote poetry based on two of the main characters. It still exists, somewhere. Please don’t look for it.

There are few things sweeter, I think, than dusting off an old book series that you loved when you were young, and finding that it is just as good, if not even better, than you remember it being. Shadows of the Apt is one of those series.