Lords of Uncreation is one of my most anticipated books of the year. Adrian Tchaikovsky is a master and The Final Architecture series is such a joy to read. And when I say it’s a joy to read, I do not mean it is fluffy or happy. It is not. But the writing is immersive and gripping and the smallest detail is so well considered. Tchaikovsky pulls it all together and gives us as happy an ending as we could expect.
We open with Andecka Tal Mar a Hugh (Human Council) created Intermediary trying to buy time for the inhabitants of a planet to escape as an Architect slowly approaches. Just before she makes contact with the Architect’s mind, a Partheni warship pops in from unspace with a lab grown Partheni Intermediary there to help. They are successful and Tchaikovsky has thrown us back into his messy, chaotic, and gritty universe. Andecka resents Cognoscenti Intermediary Grave, who didn’t have to go through a brutal surgery and chemical treatment to become an Int, but also feels bound to her because they both understand the high cost of trying to convince an Architect to not sculpt a planet into a piece of uninhabitable art.
All the factions we were getting to know in the first two books are still not cooperating (except for when they do).
Well that’s an achievement, Ollie considered. Getting Nativists and Partheni pissed at you at the same time. Something to go on the tombstone.
Anyone who is living through this current time will recognize the way the very rich are trying to protect themselves and only themselves, factions with a common interest in survival are unable to work together because they are more concerned with the their differences, and no one is listening to the actual experts. Some humans are overly concerned with how to define what it is to be human, and people with power and wealth are quite ready to enslave, grind up and discard others for the benefit of only the rich. The Uskaros want to leash (enslave) Idris long before the Architects reappear, giving lie to whatever they say about “for the greater good.”
The interspecies crew of The Vulture God, plus Haever Mundy (a human spy), contingents of various aliens, including the mysterious Ash, have to work against everyone to save everyone. I just…love these characters. They’ve had the absolute snot kicked out of them over the course of the series. Tchaikovsky gives his characters so much life and individuality that every loss leaves a mark. Empathy and cooperation, even with beings we can never fully understand, saves the universe, not military might.
CW: mass death, violence, mental and physical torture, enslavement and threats of enslavement.
I received this as an advance reader copy from Orbit books and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.