Idris… sometimes felt he was built entirely out of competing vulnerabilities…
Tchaikovsky’s writing is a joy as usual, although compared with Children of Time and its sequels or Doors of Eden, this novel feels less distinctive. It’s good, it’s just not as extraordinary as some of his other work. Regardless, I’m interested to see what happens in the rest of the trilogy.
I liked the twist that the Architects are merely unwilling servants of some other power, and how this suddenly calls attention to the colonial government’s own use of criminals as forced labor: “…you know what the Architects are, for all their power? Slaves, Menheer. And if you’re a slave sent to chastise someone, and that someone sends their own slave out to plead for their master’s life, how well disposed do you think you’d be?”