I love Adrian Tchaikovsky’s books, but the Shadows of the Apt felt pretty slow to me. I’ve read through the first three books (I think) and I don’t remember much other than the setting being neat. Haven’t read Echoes of the Fall at all.

Highly recommend the Children of Time series, the third book in particular gets me sobbing every time. The Final Architecture was great too, and I enjoyed Cage of Souls.

I remember enjoying The Shadows of the Apt when I read them years ago. Couldn’t tell you anything about them now other then it’s a fantasy series with bug-based races.

I agree with others here. His misses are good enough to finish and his hits are too good to put down. Shroud was my book of the year.

They once asked a famous singer about listening to Billie Holiday.

“It’s like eating spinach. It might not always be good, but it’s always good for you.”

That’s how I feel about AT

I’ve read five of his books: the three “Children of…” books; Alien Clay; and the first Shadows of the Apt book, Empire of Black and Gold.

Children of Time is one of my top 10 favourite books. The other two in that series, as well as Alien Clay, are fantastic. The ideas are really big and the theme of togetherness is something that I love and can really get behind.

Empire of Black and Gold is, as you say, fine. It feels like a much less experienced author wrote it - and after checking Wikipedia it does seem to be his first book. It’s fantasy rather than sci-fi and the ideas and plot are much smaller and more character-driven. It seems to be aimed at teens. It’s a bit slower, smaller in scope, simpler. I’m still going to be collecting and reading the rest of the series if I see them in a charity shop or library, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to find them.

Overall, if you can afford the bundle, go for it. Empire of Black and Gold wasn’t a bad book, just not up to the standard I’d come to expect from Adrian Tchaikovsky. Hope this helps!

I absolutely love his books, the Children of Time series is excellent. Last year I read his Alien Clay book, when it just got released and I also loved that one. Service Model I liked, but less so, it was pretty good but not great. I read Shroud this year and I just could not put it down. I was totally immersed in that one and loved it.

With Tchaikovsky you can’t go wrong imho, even his “lesser” work is still pretty good.

Thanks for the heads up. He’s one of the better contemporary scifi authors, even if not all of his stuff is amazing.

It’s unavailable in my area, but I did just finish Shroud by him and really enjoyed it.

His music is good tho