Dragonfly Falling
Adrian Tchaikovsky
London: Tor, 2008
ISBN: 9-781529-050288
676 pp.
In the lands of the Apt, the Wasp Empire is on the march. The black and gold armies have a seemingly endless appetite for conquest and they are continuing their campaigns against the lowlands. Inspired by the possibilities of living in a lawless age of aggression, some of the ant city states are willing to expand their own domains and do what they do best, which, as it is stated in the text, is killing other ants. Crucially, ants want Collegium, a city of beetle scientists and artificers where Stenwold Maker, one of our principal heroes, is rallying the defences against what will be a hugely superior army of enormously well-disciplined ants – what one can see, all can see and when one can hear an order then all immediately obey.
Dragonfly Falling is the second in Adrian Tchakiovsky’s Shadows of the Apt series. It has been several years since I read the first one, Empire in Black and Gold but, with the aid of a brief two-page glossary of characters, places and organizations and the skillful prompting of the author, it was as if I had never been away. We are at once immersed in the little band of protagonists who are going to do their best to stop the war or, at least, warn those complacent communities that have become familiar with peace that this time it is all really going to kick off. They include various beetle kinden, fly kinden, moths, mantids and so forth. At some stage in the past, a mysterious and possibly magical event or set of events took place that enabled some of these creepy-crawlies (they are not all insects) to become ascendant, i.e. intelligent, probably human-sized – although this is not clear – and with agency over their own lives. The apt creatures retain some of their previous features: wasps can shoot stinger energy bolts, those with wings can fly to various levels of ability and so forth. However, many others were left behind and are treated as animals, like the draft beetles that appear from time to time. The apt are busy, as might be expected and their technology is coming along apace, with flying machines, rail roads and a rudimentary submarine among their achievements. The result is, in this case, that warfare is entering an industrial age in which it is becoming much more deadly for the participants but has yet to become as devastating for non-combatants as it has become in the real world. It would not surprise me if that changed between now and the end of the ten-book series.
Tchaikovsky is really an excellent writer as well as a somewhat dispiritingly prolific one. In this book, he very deftly expands the action from the first book and hints at what is likely to come in the future. Some characters have started to develop in unexpected ways and display back stories that casts new light on their actions. Some that started out as possible heroes have taken a different path and others who were definitely baddies hint at a possible future form of redemption. This is all managed while a brisk pace is maintained with numerous points of view and locations. I look forward to reading the rest of the series – I had to order this one as it has been a few years since it was published (well, 16) and I imaging I will have to do the same with the rest. Fortunately, Kinokuniya is very efficient in this regard.
If you only plan to read one multi-book series on the lives and times of intelligent insects and assorted other bugs then let this be the one.
John Walsh, Krirk University
Ladprao 64 