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inverarity) wrote2023-07-07 06:33 pm
inverarity) wrote2023-07-07 06:33 pm
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Book Review: The Expert System's Champion, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
A sequel novella about colonists on a post-apocalyptic deathworld.
Tor Books, 2021, 194 pages
The Expert System's Brother was a self-contained novella by the hugely prolific and diverse Adrian Tchaikovsky. In that book, we learned about humans living on a world with alien life forms, to which they have adjusted, except for a small number of people who are "severed." For the Severed, the entire world becomes toxic to them. They are driven out of their communities, treated as cursed, and usually die. Handry was one such Severed, but with the help of his sister, he was able to make a new life for himself.
The Expert System's Champion takes place ten years later. Handry has created a society of Severed individuals like himself. The villagers call them the "Bandage-Men," and they are bogey-men used to scare children, but they are also now performing necessary services, like hunting down dangerous native fauna, and the "normal" humans have begun accommodating themselves to them. Then Handry and his bandage-men learn of a threat from new life forms, including some that seem to be destroying entire villages.
Along with Handry's struggle to figure out what's going on and how to save mankind on this strange, poisonous world, we also get flashbacks to the original settlers of this planet, and how they were almost wiped out, and what they did in order to survive here.
The Expert System's Brother builds on the worldbuilding of the first novella, and adds some gruesome biotech to the cybernetics introduced in the first book. However, I didn't really like the sequel as much as the first book. I had already figured out the secret, so this read more like a bunch of monster battles than a novella of sci-fi exploration and discovery.
It's still quite interesting - Tchaikovsky is always imaginative and spins a pretty good yarn even with his lesser efforts. And there is probably the potential there for another installment in the series.
Also by Adrian Tchaikovsky: My reviews of Children of Time, Children of Ruin, Empire in Black and Gold, Dragonfly Falling, The Expert System's Brother, and Made Things.
My complete list of book reviews.
Tor Books, 2021, 194 pages
In Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Expert System's Champion, sometimes the ones you hate are the only ones who can save you.
It's been 10 years since Handry was wrenched away from his family and friends, forced to wander a world he no longer understood. But with the help of the Ancients, he has cobbled together a life, of sorts, for himself and his fellow outcasts.
Wandering from village to village, welcoming the folk that the townships abandon, fighting the monsters the villagers cannot - or dare not - his ever-growing band of misfits has become the stuff of legend, a story told by parents to keep unruly children in line.
But there is something new and dangerous in the world, and the beasts of the land are acting against their nature, destroying the towns they once left in peace.
And for the first time in memory, the Ancients have no wisdom to offer....
The Expert System's Brother was a self-contained novella by the hugely prolific and diverse Adrian Tchaikovsky. In that book, we learned about humans living on a world with alien life forms, to which they have adjusted, except for a small number of people who are "severed." For the Severed, the entire world becomes toxic to them. They are driven out of their communities, treated as cursed, and usually die. Handry was one such Severed, but with the help of his sister, he was able to make a new life for himself.
The Expert System's Champion takes place ten years later. Handry has created a society of Severed individuals like himself. The villagers call them the "Bandage-Men," and they are bogey-men used to scare children, but they are also now performing necessary services, like hunting down dangerous native fauna, and the "normal" humans have begun accommodating themselves to them. Then Handry and his bandage-men learn of a threat from new life forms, including some that seem to be destroying entire villages.
Along with Handry's struggle to figure out what's going on and how to save mankind on this strange, poisonous world, we also get flashbacks to the original settlers of this planet, and how they were almost wiped out, and what they did in order to survive here.
The Expert System's Brother builds on the worldbuilding of the first novella, and adds some gruesome biotech to the cybernetics introduced in the first book. However, I didn't really like the sequel as much as the first book. I had already figured out the secret, so this read more like a bunch of monster battles than a novella of sci-fi exploration and discovery.
It's still quite interesting - Tchaikovsky is always imaginative and spins a pretty good yarn even with his lesser efforts. And there is probably the potential there for another installment in the series.
Also by Adrian Tchaikovsky: My reviews of Children of Time, Children of Ruin, Empire in Black and Gold, Dragonfly Falling, The Expert System's Brother, and Made Things.
My complete list of book reviews.