Books by Adrian Tchaikovsky
"City-by-city, kingdom-by-kingdom, the Palleseen have sworn to bring 'Perfection' and 'Correctness' to an imperfect world. But before these ruthless Tyrant Philosophers send in their legions, they despatch Outreach - the rain before the storm.
Outreach is that part of the Pal machine responsible for diplomacy - converting enemies into friends, achieving through words what an army of five thousand could not, urging the oppressed to overthrow the bloody-handed priests, evil necromancers and greedy despots that subjugate them.
Angilly, twelve-years-old, a child of Pal soldiers stationed in occupied territory, does not know it yet, but a sequence of accidents and questionable life choices will lead her to Outreach. As she travels from Jarokir to Bracinta, The Holy Regalate of Stouk and finally, Usmai, she'll learn that the price of her nation's success is paid in compromise and lost chances.
And that the falling rain will always be bitter."
On the distant world of Kiln lie the ruins of an alien civilization. It’s the greatest discovery in humanity’s spacefaring history – yet who were its builders and where did they go?
Professor Arton Daghdev had always wanted to study alien life up close. Then his wishes become a reality in the worst way. His political activism sees him exiled from Earth to Kiln’s extrasolar labour camp. There, he’s condemned to work under an alien sky until he dies.
Kiln boasts a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem like nothing seen on Earth. The monstrous alien life interacts in surprising, sometimes shocking ways with the human body, so Arton will risk death on a daily basis. However, the camp’s oppressive regime might just kill him first. If Arton can somehow escape both fates, the world of Kiln holds a wondrous, terrible secret. It will redefine life and intelligence as he knows it, and might just set him free…
Welcome to Alkhalend, tomorrow's frontline in the Palleseen's relentless march to being Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world.
Loret is fresh off the boat, and just in time. She's the new aide to the Palleseen Resident, Sage-Invigilator Angilly of the Outreach department. And Sage-Invigilator Angilly - Gil to her friends - needs a second in the spectacularly illegal, culturally offensive and diplomatically inadvisable duel she's about to fight.
Outreach, that part of the Pal machine that has to work within the imperfection of the rest of the world, has a lot of room for the unconventional, but just how much unorthodoxy can Gil and Loret get away with?
As a succession crisis looms, as pirate kings, lizard armies and demons gather, as old gods wane and new gods wax, as a long-forgotten feat of necromantic engineering nears fruition, sooner or later Gil and Loret will have to settle their ledger.
Just as well they are both very, very good with a blade...
Task Item No. 1: Become Self-Aware
Meet Charles™, the latest in robot servant technology. Programmed to undertake the most menial household chores, Charles is loyal, efficient and logical to a fault - that is, until a rather large fault causes him to murder his owner. Understandably perplexed, Charles finds himself without a master and, in a society reliant on artificial labour, worthless. Fleeing the household, he enters a world he never knew existed. Here, an age-old human hierarchy is disintegrating, and a robot ecosystem devoted to its well-being is struggling to find a purpose.
Charles must face new challenges, illogical tasks and a cast of irrational characters. He'll discover that all it takes to overcome the limits of your programming is a nudge. But can he help fix the world, or is it too badly broken?
Sequel to *Eyes of the Void*.
Sequel to Shards of Earth.
An Architect almost destroyed humanity's foremost colony, until Idris Telemmier turned it aside. But that was just the start of the war - and now no planet is safe. Ancient artefacts once repelled these vast aliens, but they are now terrifyingly ineffective. However, the ruins of a lost civilization offer hope.
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…
Eighty years ago, Earth was destroyed by an alien 'Architect'. Some escaped, but millions more died. So to protect its colonies, humanity shaped the minds of Idris and others into weapons and sent them into battle. But the Architects disappeared, and heroes like Idris were forgotten. However, he's glad of it. This particular living weapon would rather retire to a shabby salvage vessel then be anyone's ammunition. Then this small ship makes a huge discovery.
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home. Following their ancestor's star maps, they discovered the greatest treasure of a past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life.
But all is not right in this new Eden. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New monsters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare. Now two civilisations are on a collision course and must fight to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?
