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This is the first Tchaikovsky book I’ve read that has no bugs in it. However, it makes up for it with VELOCIRAPTORS.
In a land in which everyone is a shapeshifter, Maniye has shapeshifter-related problems. Her father is the asshole leader of the patriarchal Wolf clan that defeated the previously dominant Tiger clan, and her mother was the captive Tiger queen who was executed immediately after Maniye’s birth.
Most people can only shift into one animal form. But Maniye can shift into both wolf and tiger. She’s kept the latter secret, as usually having two shift forms drives you insane, and if she reveals her tiger self, it will be cut from her. This is even worse than it sounds, as the shift form is also your soul, so she’d be losing half her soul.
First level of spoilers here. This covers stuff in the first few chapters which might be more fun to discover by yourself.
Comments will include spoilers through the end of the book, so don’t read the comments if you only want first-level spoilers.
Soon after her clan captures Hesprec, an elderly, itinerant serpent priest to be sacrificed to the Wolf god, Maniye learns her father’s political plans for her, which include being mated to Broken Axe, the man who actually executed her mother. Taking Hesprec with her, Maniye runs for her life…
Meanwhile, a crocodile guy who can also turn into a VELOCIRAPTOR is traveling with a laughing hyena woman and a Komodo dragon PIRATE TURNED SLAVE to make a deal with the wolf clan on behalf of his own asshole father. These three have the most absolutely delightful relationship.
Shyri, the hyena “Laughing Girl,” comes from a society where mocking is a basic conversational skill and pissing on your enemy’s sacred idols is your mildest possible opening gambit. Venat, the Komodo dragon, was taken prisoner by Asmander, the crocodile/velociraptor, and his name was magically taken from him, so he can’t leave until Asmander gives it back. He and Asmander’s relationship consists of watching each other’s backs, amiably bickering, and promising to kill each other when the time comes.
The worldbuilding in this book, especially when it comes to shapeshifting, is beyond outstanding. Every detail is incredibly cool and often very original, from naming traditions to magic to Gods. To take just one example, a human wearing armor and carrying a sword who becomes a wolf will be a wolf whose hide is almost as tough as iron and whose claws are almost as hard and sharp as the sword.
The cultures roughly correspond to pre-Columbus America, Asia, and Africa, but it’s pretty rough. There’s no “the wolves are Japanese,” and while wolf culture is very different from hyena culture, the wolves and hyenas all also have their own clans with their own customs, and within the clans, people still have different ideas about things. But it’s all distinctly non-European bronze age as it begins to become iron age, which is an unusual setting that I really enjoyed.
Despite some dark elements and the rape in the backstory, the overall feel of this story was just incredibly fun. It has the same gleeful inventiveness of the Apt books, only this time it’s shifters rather than kinden.
I feel confident that bugs will appear at some point, though. There are three fat books, he won’t be able to resist.
Second level of spoilers, through the end of the book!
The Champions were SO AWESOME! I fucking love that there is a SPIRIT WORLD OF PREHISTORIC BEASTS that can choose you as a second shift form.
I loved that the animals you shift into are your “mute brothers” and the idea that you reincarnate back and forth. And that shifting is called Stepping. And that we learn that the Wolves have no written language when Maniye spots some in the Riverlands and doesn’t even know what it is. Basically all the worldbuilding is amazing.
Did I read it correctly that Asmander, Shyri, and Venat had at least one threesome?
Hesprec is so great! I did not see that coming at all. I absolutely love that serpents can shed their bodies for a new one, and that they look pale when they’re old because it’s their old skin getting ready to shed!
I love the bears. They are the best. I so feel for Loud Thunder gamely trying to be a political leader while inwardly wishing he was in his nice quiet cave.
Any ideas on what Maniye's Champion is? Helen Keeble suggested an Andrewsarchus.
I am very concerned about the upcoming doom. I’m afraid that it is colonialism by non-shifters (the Apt?), and if so, there is no way that even the most badass of beasts can fight guns and diseases they have no resistance to.
Engagement with premise: A+. Delivers both iddy wish-fulfillment of a downtrodden girl coming into her own, and ALL the cultural and magical shapeshifter worldbuilding you could possibly desire.
The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book 1)
In a land in which everyone is a shapeshifter, Maniye has shapeshifter-related problems. Her father is the asshole leader of the patriarchal Wolf clan that defeated the previously dominant Tiger clan, and her mother was the captive Tiger queen who was executed immediately after Maniye’s birth.
Most people can only shift into one animal form. But Maniye can shift into both wolf and tiger. She’s kept the latter secret, as usually having two shift forms drives you insane, and if she reveals her tiger self, it will be cut from her. This is even worse than it sounds, as the shift form is also your soul, so she’d be losing half her soul.
First level of spoilers here. This covers stuff in the first few chapters which might be more fun to discover by yourself.
Comments will include spoilers through the end of the book, so don’t read the comments if you only want first-level spoilers.
Soon after her clan captures Hesprec, an elderly, itinerant serpent priest to be sacrificed to the Wolf god, Maniye learns her father’s political plans for her, which include being mated to Broken Axe, the man who actually executed her mother. Taking Hesprec with her, Maniye runs for her life…
Meanwhile, a crocodile guy who can also turn into a VELOCIRAPTOR is traveling with a laughing hyena woman and a Komodo dragon PIRATE TURNED SLAVE to make a deal with the wolf clan on behalf of his own asshole father. These three have the most absolutely delightful relationship.
Shyri, the hyena “Laughing Girl,” comes from a society where mocking is a basic conversational skill and pissing on your enemy’s sacred idols is your mildest possible opening gambit. Venat, the Komodo dragon, was taken prisoner by Asmander, the crocodile/velociraptor, and his name was magically taken from him, so he can’t leave until Asmander gives it back. He and Asmander’s relationship consists of watching each other’s backs, amiably bickering, and promising to kill each other when the time comes.
The worldbuilding in this book, especially when it comes to shapeshifting, is beyond outstanding. Every detail is incredibly cool and often very original, from naming traditions to magic to Gods. To take just one example, a human wearing armor and carrying a sword who becomes a wolf will be a wolf whose hide is almost as tough as iron and whose claws are almost as hard and sharp as the sword.
The cultures roughly correspond to pre-Columbus America, Asia, and Africa, but it’s pretty rough. There’s no “the wolves are Japanese,” and while wolf culture is very different from hyena culture, the wolves and hyenas all also have their own clans with their own customs, and within the clans, people still have different ideas about things. But it’s all distinctly non-European bronze age as it begins to become iron age, which is an unusual setting that I really enjoyed.
Despite some dark elements and the rape in the backstory, the overall feel of this story was just incredibly fun. It has the same gleeful inventiveness of the Apt books, only this time it’s shifters rather than kinden.
I feel confident that bugs will appear at some point, though. There are three fat books, he won’t be able to resist.
Second level of spoilers, through the end of the book!
The Champions were SO AWESOME! I fucking love that there is a SPIRIT WORLD OF PREHISTORIC BEASTS that can choose you as a second shift form.
I loved that the animals you shift into are your “mute brothers” and the idea that you reincarnate back and forth. And that shifting is called Stepping. And that we learn that the Wolves have no written language when Maniye spots some in the Riverlands and doesn’t even know what it is. Basically all the worldbuilding is amazing.
Did I read it correctly that Asmander, Shyri, and Venat had at least one threesome?
Hesprec is so great! I did not see that coming at all. I absolutely love that serpents can shed their bodies for a new one, and that they look pale when they’re old because it’s their old skin getting ready to shed!
I love the bears. They are the best. I so feel for Loud Thunder gamely trying to be a political leader while inwardly wishing he was in his nice quiet cave.
Any ideas on what Maniye's Champion is? Helen Keeble suggested an Andrewsarchus.
I am very concerned about the upcoming doom. I’m afraid that it is colonialism by non-shifters (the Apt?), and if so, there is no way that even the most badass of beasts can fight guns and diseases they have no resistance to.
Engagement with premise: A+. Delivers both iddy wish-fulfillment of a downtrodden girl coming into her own, and ALL the cultural and magical shapeshifter worldbuilding you could possibly desire.
The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book 1)
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And I’m delighted that you I’ve it too :-)
I’m just sad he didn’t turn it into a 9+ book epic series because I would read a LOT more in this setting.
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I'm pretty sure I would have noticed if there was an Asmander/Shyri/Venater threesome at some point - but I'd be very happy to have gotten that wrong :D These three are so great together.
I also love Hesprec a lot, and Hesprec's relationship with Maniye. I love how they keep rescuing each other.
No spoilers for the other books - except that you're right to be concerned...
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I think one of the problems with it (for me) is that doesn’t really have a high concept premise like all his other books (bug people! Iron Age shifters! Spider people (several completely different books)! Bio engineered dog soldiers!). In all of those there’s a certain expectation of what you’re going to get, which he then delivers in SPADES. This one... “complicated prison in tremendously far future SF setting” doesn’t set any expectations for me. It kinda doesn’t help that he keeps pulling out unexpected random stuff in an almost throwaway fashion.
(I would say what, but they’re all spoilery. Let’s just say it’s like having a book folllowing a Cambridge scholar who goes on an adventure with a knight, meets a superhero, and then gets beamed up by aliens)
I’m currently 70% of the way through the book and still have no coherent idea of the setting or its rules, or why the main character is telling me this story in the first place...
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(I also concluded Andrewsarchus. And I don't think that there was any threesoming in this book, but there is some poly later in the series which is pretty damn blatant. ETA: Poly not necessarily between those three, and I'm not telling you who it concerns. :P)
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The names are so good, and I love how the stories they encode are so often not obvious from the words themselves. And then once you know the story, they encapsulate such richness of meaning.
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