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After Children of Ruin, I dove a little deeper into Adrian Tchaikovsky's work with his 10-volume Shadows of the Apt series, which is entirely different. This guy knows how to dig into a premise. The setting is steampunk-adjacent, with the author's usual entomological fascination: various "kinden" with powers and ethnic features derived from their arthropod totems face a Nazi-ish threat from the expanding wasp-kinden empire, leading to an alliance of the technologically gifted "Apt" with the fallen masters of the "Age of Lore," which has largely faded into myth.
It's epic fantasy, fellowship and all, with gunpowder, ornithopters and airships (and also various bug-powers which don't count as magic, because who believes in magic?). Ben Allen's narration is excellent with the increasingly sprawling cast of characters.
I'm in book three now, and thoroughly hooked on the characters and how magic and technology will come to terms in this world.
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