After Cage of Souls, I returned to Adrian Tchaikovsky this month with the novella Elder Race. While Elder Race had fewer moments of me white-knuckle gripping the book the way Cage of Souls did, it was still an extremely enjoyable book that delivered several stunning moments.

A monster stalks the neighboring kingdom, and Lynesse Fourth Daughter seeks out an ancient wizard to call upon a pact. Earth has long been silent, and ancient anthropologist Nyr Illim Tevitch does his best to avoid contaminating the humans he was meant to observe.

This book has a tremendously fun setup. I was worried in the first chapter that the story would be a fairly standard “young royal girl in a fantasy setting longs for something more” with Lynesse (a fine story, just not for me) but chapter two upends any preconceived notions one might have with the introduction of the second main character, Nyr. The structure of the book alternates between the two, re-contextualizing the prior chapter into the different genre and worldview that each character carries, shifting between science fiction and high fantasy.

One of the stunning moments of the book is when this alternation culminates in a single chapter of both characters narrating, side-by-side, their version of the origin of the world. The sci-fi and high fantasy versions of both narratives are set next to each other, and beyond the typographical boldness of this chapter, the lyricism and sheer craft on display in the genre shifts are such a joy to read.

The second really stunning moment in the book for me was as the characters approached the end of their quest. A third genre begins to muscle its way into the narrative, shifting the very landscape of the book just as the “demon” that Lynesse and Nyr chase does. A genuinely shocking change of pace to really heighten the stakes.

The final thing that really drew my eye in this book is putting it in dialogue with Cage of Souls. In my June 2024 post, I mentioned having read two works by William Hope Hodgson back to back, and how this let me pick up on specific preoccupations that the author had across multiple works. The same specific delight occurred with this reading. In Tchaikovsky’s Cage of Souls, which I read in September, one of the minor characters is the last biologist on Earth. In Elder Race, Nyr is perhaps the last anthropologist (from Earth specifically, but also generally). I loved seeing this idea play out across two different stories of the last scientist in a certain discipline, and how they cope with being the end of the line. In Cage of Souls the biologist has a gruffness to him, and in Elder Race Nyr is possessed of a deep grief, which runs deep enough to cause dissociative episodes that requires a piece of technology to suppress.

I mentioned in my Cage of Souls review that I normally prefer novellas to huge fantasy novels, and was shocked at how much I loved Cage of Souls and it’s length. Tchaikovsky once again swerved around my notions of my own taste. While I do think this novella was about the perfect length for the character arcs, which would have worn thin if carried any further, I did find myself wishing that the novella was a bit longer and had spent more time on the world. I liked the hints at a broader setting – there is perhaps an implication (or a grasping at straws on my part), that the thing which comes from beyond space, the signal that corrupts life around it, the demon, is the reason why there has been no word from Earth. The bio-engineering of the historic colonists that is still seen in people from the various kingdoms, like Esha Free Mark, was mentioned in brief. I wanted to know more about the shape of the world, and the different customs that would arise out of bio-engineered colonists, who over time forgot they were colonists at all. Of course, had I gotten more, it would have potentially deflated the sense of wonder of the story, and sometimes it’s good to sit with a story and go “but what else??” and dream a bit.