Reviews and Comments

Really loved the first book in this series so even with developing the characters and world further and the addition of a demon sex workers character, it can only get a 4.5 to differentiate it from book 1.

set in a military camp this time, it appeared as a departure from a lot of the themes from the first book but it maintained the polygod central plot.

Definitely enjoyed and would recommend and am not sure where book three is gonna take us, but i am in for the ride.

I really think this is one of my favourite AT novels I have read.

My simple pitch, this is the fantasy novel equivalent of Fredy Perlmans "Worker-student action committees".

full stop.

Just wrapped up this series and very much appreciated it. It had both the scale of everything but still kept the story and characters within a time and place that was easy to comprehend.

many sympathetic characters and many despicable.

By the end I had trouble keeping track of the different factions involved in the grand scale of all the issues, but I appreciated the application of three way fight logistics, and cataclysmic problems.

happy I read it and for anyone Adrian Tchaikovsky pilled it is a great series.

a good expansion of the story and ended with me wanting resolution from the next book, and feeling very impatient for it.

I just devoured this one for a refresher before starting the next two books in the trilogy. Really like AT's world building and how his prose really paints me a picture that looks just like 70's sci-fi mate paintings and book covers.

and as always this book features invertebrates as a plot point like so many of his stories!

....and multi-party conflicts, world ending crisis, class and gender politics, revolutions, the occult and cults, and other standards of good sci-fi in my opinion.

Rereading this one from last year as a refresher to digest the trilogy!

This book was a bit of a punishment to get through. I just really hate Stephen King's writing and not gonna try another book. I have liked some film adaptations and was hoping for easy reading from his works but they drag, they aren't scary, they do not age well. I shouldn't expect much but every women is intellectually dumb and every man is emotional dumb and they are all so two dimensional.

Listened to the '87 CBC audio drama of it and it was such a time capsule to audio productions from another era. The specific seductive feminine voice, the music, the way shevek sounds like he is the voice actor for some favourite Canadian children's cartoon.

Rereading/ie listening to the 87 CBC audiodrama

a fun read but found myself near the end having my mind wander away from the story line which is not what you want when it's coming to a climax.

stuff I really enjoyed was unconventional takes on religion and cults, and the presentation of a larger labour strike by fantasy creatures. whenever class struggle works its way into sci-fi or fantasy for me it makes me really appreciate the book.

really love China Mieville's world building and writing, but this wasn't a top book of his for me.

Bookwyrm note: just learnt how to add new titles for obscure anarchist titles to our local instance and put this one in! It is as simple as adding /create-book to the end of your instances url and filling out the details and uploading a pic of the cover. Definitely going to expand and add texts as I go through them now!

First review of 2025. This was a fun book, first title I've read from China Miélville targetted at a younger audience. Fun story, as if the author had decided to take a variety of puns and through the lens of surrealism bring them to life. There are some unexpected directions it goes in but follows the YA epic model of fantasy, multiverses, and magic.

Fun low stakes read for those who never grow out of the genre.