Reviews with content warning for Racism - Shards of Earth

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Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky

4 reviews

bluejayreads's review against another edition

3.75

I generally prefer fantasy over scifi, especially scifi as hard as Adrian Tchaikovksy tends to write. But I picked this up because I enjoyed his novella Elder Race and was willing to try something else. This is fairly hard scifi, but it had solid and likeable characters, a strong plot that manages to have our protagonists hopping from planet to planet without ever feeling contrived or like a fetch quest, and some absolutely amazing worldbuilding concepts. So many of the ideas were unique and tied into a great story. The amazing worldbuilding manages to make the whole story feel intricate and vivid, even though the plot isn't particularly complex. Adrian Tchaikovsky is a great writer and I enjoyed the read. I'm on the fence about reading book two - not becuase I think it will be bad or that there isn't room for a sequel, but becuase sequels are usually not quite as good as book one and while I liked this book, I wouldn't say I love it or call it a favorite. But again, this book was good, so I'm not ruling it out.

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mdiffer's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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laurareads87's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Shards of Earth is an epic space opera that follows the multi-species crew of a run down patched together salvage ship who find themselves at the centre of interplanetary political manoeuvring with the spectre of a second war with the planet-destroying Architects – moon sized entities humans know almost nothing about, but which destroyed Earth – looming.

There are a lot of things that I like about Shards of Earth that would lead me to recommend it to fans of space operas. Tchaikovsky has managed to develop a cast of characters of multiple different species – several of which are far from humanoid – while giving them distinct personalities, avoiding reducing each to a kind of representation of their respective species. Though a little bit slow at the beginning (for perhaps the first 15% or so), the plot moves along at a good pace overall, kept me interested throughout, and contained a few twists I did not see coming. Finally, with Shards of Earth Tchaikovsky has constructed a complex world with many societies, colonies, and alien species; the political and historical dynamics are very well developed without too many detours into ‘info dumping’ explanations.

The book includes indexes of characters, worlds, species, and ships, as well as a timeline for reference – while I appreciate these inclusions, I did not find that I needed them to follow what was going on. I can see them being very useful to revisit before reading the next book in the series as a refresher: this was my first book by Adrian Tchaikovsky but won’t be my last – I’m glad that this is the first book in a series because I’ll happily read the rest (though it’s worth mentioning for those not necessarily wanting to start a long series that this novel works quite well as a standalone – it left me wanting to read more, but not unsatisfied with how it ended).

A minor complaint from a technical standpoint is that I’d prefer if the chapters were shorter for the e-book especially – having only 5 parts plus a prologue in a book this long is not my personal preference when it comes to navigating an e-book table of contents, though these chapters are broken up with line breaks and shifts in perspective that form convenient spots to pause reading if needed.

Thank you to Orbit Books + Netgalley for providing me with an ARC.

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queenmackenzie's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This is the third book by Adrian Tchaikovsky that I’ve reviewed, and the third of his new books I’ve read this year. He is certainly a powerhouse when it comes to releasing books, and I am more than happy to try and keep up! So far, I have not been disappointed. This story is set in a world in which humans have been colonising space for about two centuries, and it begins at the end of the war with the Architects, great planet-sized beings that got their name from the way they destroy worlds by twisting and ripping them to create works of art. Very early on in the book there is a chilling description of Earth as it has been left by the Architects, a great flower-like structure with its core exposed and frozen, forever reaching towards the sun (this is actually the image on the cover of the book).

‘In the seventy-eighth year of the war, an Architect came to Berlenhof. The lights across the galaxy had been going out, one by one, since its start. All those little mining worlds, the far-flung settlements, the great hollow polyaspora of human expansion, exploding out from a vacant centre. Because the Architects had come for Earth first.’

In the aftermath of the war, all the different factions that had united against this unstoppable force begin to split into factions, so that along with the great loss of planets and lives, and the depletion of resources, there is great tension politically across the known universe. Unaltered humans -the Colonisers- are resentful of other groups, such as the genetically modified humans and other species that have integrated themselves into society, and another war seems to be brewing. It is in this high-strung political climate that the crew of Vulture God, a salvage vessel aboard which Idris now makes a living, finds a ship only recently destroyed, and it seems clear it was done by an Architect. From here the crew are hunted by all the various factions who seek to use this finding for their own gain, while more sinister things seem to be happening in the depths of space…

One of the things I loved about this book is the scale: it is set in space, which is as infinite as you can get, but there are certain elements that actually make it feel huge. The massive Architects, the ‘unspace’ that people use to travel between distant parts of the universe, the void in which a large and incomprehensible presence haunts all who cross it, and the Throughways and Relics left by a civilisation named the Originators, which nobody truly understands. These massive elements of the universe pair perfectly with the claustrophobia of the spacer life, in small ships that keep recycling parts to keep running, in overpopulated docking bays on overpopulated planets. The contrast was well executed, and it made me feel the same way the characters did as I read the different parts.

And speaking of characters, this was definitely a fun cast, and I got very attached to them! Tchaikovsky has a great knack for character writing, and especially writing group dynamics. I loved getting to know the point of view characters and their internal thoughts, but I also enjoyed watching their interactions and changing relationships with others. Idris and Solace were probably my favourites of the main cast, though Rollo comes a close third, and everyone (strange aliens included) feels well-rounded and believable, even those that appear in only a few scenes.

‘The lethal barrage of fire fell away from them, raindrops down a window. Except the window was the universe and ‘down’ was in every direction.’

But really, Shards of Earth is just beautifully written. It perfectly balances the technical language with vivid imagery, and the character development pulls it all together to create this brilliant thing. And of course, it wouldn’t be an Adrian Tchaikovsky novel without creatures of weird and wonderful evolutionary traits! Powerful clam overlords, crabs with screens on their shells, strange worm-like creatures, and near-indestructible symbiotes populate these pages, and I hope to see more in the next instalment!

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