Hi everyone! Today is my date for the Shards of Earth blog tour that’s being hosted by TheWriteReads! I’m always excited to participate in their massive tours, and there are some great people who are involved in this one! Make sure you check out TheWriteReads on Twitter to see all the people on the tour stops and to get involved in the community!
Shards of Earth
by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Series: The Final Architects #1
Release date: May 27th 2021
Genre: Adult, Science Fiction
Rating: ★★★☆☆ .75
The Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author of Children of Time brings us an extraordinary new space opera about humanity on the brink of extinction, and how one man’s discovery will save or destroy us all.
The war is over. Its heroes forgotten. Until one chance discovery . . .
Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade him in the war. And one of humanity’s heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers.After earth was destroyed, mankind created a fighting elite to save their species, enhanced humans such as Idris. In the silence of space they could communicate, mind-to-mind, with the enemy. Then their alien aggressors, the Architects, simply disappeared – and Idris and his kind became obsolete.
Now, fifty years later, Idris and his crew have discovered something strange abandoned in space. It’s clearly the work of the Architects – but are they returning? And if so, why? Hunted by gangsters, cults and governments, Idris and his crew race across the galaxy hunting for answers. For they now possess something of incalculable value, that many would kill to obtain.
This was my first book by Tchaikovsky, which is kind of incredible to think about since so many of his books have ended up on my TBR. I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this book, but I had high expectations because of how many people love his books.
I really liked the cast of characters that we followed and I don’t think that I can choose a favorite because they’re all just so interesting! This is a ragtag group of spacers who stumble onto a major discovery that will change humanity forever, and I loved how real they all felt. The idea of the Architects is also incredibly interesting, and I always found myself hungry for more information about them.
I will say that it took me quite a long time to become invested in the characters and the story because there is a lot of setup in the beginning and so it was pretty slow at first. Once I reached about 30%, I started to feel more invested, and by 50% I was flying through the rest of the book just to see what happened next! I’m glad that I stuck through the slower beginning because I think it was worth it in the end. I didn’t realize until I reached the end that there is actually a glossary in the back, so if you’re struggling through the beginning, make sure to check the glossary!
The variety of aliens and even humans in this story were incredible, and at times it was tough to keep them all straight because there were so many on the fringes of the story, but once I got it all straight in my head it was so fun to learn about them all! Adding to that, each race had political entities that most of the time don’t get along, and some are even on the brink of war themselves. Even faced with the possibility of the world destroying Architects returning, they continue to bicker and argue amongst themselves, and it was fun watching the crew navigate all the politics.
I loved the battles and how Idris navigated through unspace and the farther into the book you get, the more of these scenes there are which was great. The ending was also really satisfying, I liked that it wasn’t a cliffhanger but enough to make you want to know what was going to happen next.
There was one slang term that I didn’t really like and I don’t think it needed to be included because it didn’t add anything to the story. Solace is part of a genetically engineered race of women, and they come across some hostile men who dislike her for who she is and call her a dyke, which I don’t think was necessary.
I also did struggle a bit with some of the writing and the formatting. Sometimes a paragraph would start and I wasn’t sure if we were in the past or on the current day, and there were a lot of strange formatting that made it difficult at times to read. With this being an unfinished copy, I know that there will be changes made to those things but it did effect my enjoyment just slightly because of the difficulties that I had getting around some of them, but if you read a finished copy I doubt you would have those same issues.
To summarize, I did overall like this book. I gave it a final rating of 3.75, with one star being removed because it took me so long to become invested in the book and there were times at the beginning where I just didn’t want to pick it up because it felt so slow. I also removed .25 because of the difficulty I had with some of the formatting and writing.
Overall, I do think that I’ll continue this series at some point when the next book comes out, and I will be checking out more of this authors works!
Melting Pages
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