His work is aided by a Dissociative Cognition System, a ‘mod’ that allows him to shut away feelings and function only with the ‘reason’ part of his brain. The anthropologist from the Earth Explorer Corps, Nyr, has been in cold-sleep for decades, waiting for contact from his team while he intermittently collects information on the locals. Both also play with the idea of Clarke’s Third Law, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” with a fascinating corollary: even technology can’t explain everything.Įlder Races sticks to this cultural disconnect and tech-magic heritage, alternating viewpoints between the last anthropologist of a space-faring empire and the young and free-spirited woman who wants to lead the fight against a demon. Both have their roots in a culture clash of a space-faring but reduced/diminished sexually egalitarian civilization and a more feudal and gender-unequal one. It also reminded me of Andre Norton’s The Witch World saga.
In fact, if you want an interesting and more profound female-centric and complicated love relationship, I highly recommend The Rununciate trilogy, particularly Thendara House. This is a modern remake of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series, anthropologist and all.
As an aside, I’ll note that the Goodreads blurb is close to useless at clues to contents and experience. The first work I read by him was the memorable and undoubtedly to-be-classic Children of Time, and nothing has quite stood up to that mind-blowing arachnophilic experience.Įlder Races is no different. After joining Nataliya on buddy reads of a number of novellas, I’ve come to the conclusion that he has a lot of strengths when it comes to the style of sci-fi I enjoy, but lacks a certain attention to detail to move most of his works into the stratosphere. Goodreads lists over thirty books written by Tchaikovsky, and that’s not including another seventy plus short stories he lists on his website. Read December, 2021 Recommended for sci-fi fans ★ ★ ★Įlder Race, or, a post on which I muse about feelings, productivity, and the futility of blurbing.
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