Paperback, 198 pages
English language
Published Nov. 15, 2021 by Tordotcom.
In Adrian Tchaikovsky's Elder Race, a junior anthropologist on a distant planet must help the locals he has sworn to study to save a planet from an unbeatable foe.
Lynesse is the lowly Fourth Daughter of the queen, and always getting in the way.
But a demon is terrorizing the land, and now she’s an adult (albeit barely) and although she still gets in the way, she understands that the only way to save her people is to invoke the pact between her family and the Elder sorcerer who has inhabited the local tower for as long as her people have lived here (though none in living memory has approached it).
But Elder Nyr isn’t a sorcerer, and he is forbidden to help, for his knowledge of science tells him the threat cannot possibly be a demon.
Excelentísimo planteamiento con un plantel personajes sencillo pero que hace su trabajo. Para lo cortito que es sabe compartimentalizar muy bien las partes de lore, acción y personajes. Quizás lo único que le falle es el enfrentantamiento final, donde todo los detalles acaban importando muy poco en favor de explosiones. Pero en general, súper recomendable.
This short novel is a fun cross between science fiction - junior anthropologist Nyr who is the only remaining member of a research expedition to observe a long-ago established and then lost colony - and a fairy tale fantasy - fourth-eldest princess Lynnesse sets off on a quest to win the help of the mythical wizard in order to save the land. The story is told from both viewpoints, so we alternately see Nyr as a depressed, despairing, second-class anthropologist and an incomprehensible, immortal, powerful wizard of legend; and the world they are on and the monsters they battle alternately as the stuff of fairy tales and the stuff of science. Even the language they use to communicate translates unexactly, so Nyr has literally no way to describe himself that doesn't translate into Lyn's language as "magician" or "sorceror" even though he is trying to say "scientist" or "academic" or …
This short novel is a fun cross between science fiction - junior anthropologist Nyr who is the only remaining member of a research expedition to observe a long-ago established and then lost colony - and a fairy tale fantasy - fourth-eldest princess Lynnesse sets off on a quest to win the help of the mythical wizard in order to save the land. The story is told from both viewpoints, so we alternately see Nyr as a depressed, despairing, second-class anthropologist and an incomprehensible, immortal, powerful wizard of legend; and the world they are on and the monsters they battle alternately as the stuff of fairy tales and the stuff of science. Even the language they use to communicate translates unexactly, so Nyr has literally no way to describe himself that doesn't translate into Lyn's language as "magician" or "sorceror" even though he is trying to say "scientist" or "academic" or similar.
The whole thing is a fun, very readable exploration of Clarke's Law that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. It was a quick read and I could easily have read more, but I enjoyed it.
