Empire in Black and Gold is the debut of British author Adrian Tchaikovsky and the first installment in a trilogy titled Shadows of the Apt. In his debut Tchaikovsky gives us a heroic narrative where a small group of travellers offer resistance against overwhelming odds – a narrative pattern typical of epic fantasy. Empire in Black and Gold is, however, a fantasy that is far from generic. Rather it offers a story of politics, war and ruthless imperial aggression set in a highly imaginative world inhabited by nations that model themselves in the style of their insect totems:

The city states of the Lowlands have lived in peace for decades, bastions of civilization, prosperity and sophistication, protected by treaties, trade and a belief in the reasonable nature of their neighbours.

But meanwhile, in far-off corners, the Wasp Empire has been devouring city after city with its highly trained armies, its machines, its killing Art … And now its hunger for conquest and war has become insatiable.

Only the ageing Stenwold Maker, spymaster, artificer and statesman, can see that the long days of peace are over. It falls upon his shoulders to open the eyes of his people, before a black-and-gold tide sweeps down over the Lowlands and burns away everything in its path.

But first he must stop himself from becoming the Empire’s latest victim.

Seventeen years ago Stenwold Maker witnessed the unrelenting aggression and overpowering military might of the Wasp Empire firsthand and he has since then dedicated his life warning the nations of the Lowlands about the threat that the Wasps pose to their continued peace and prosperity. No one, however, takes his warnings seriously and he has been reduced to an object of ridicule among his compatriots in the university city of Collegium. Thus no one but Stenwold is apprehensive when diplomatic representatives from the Wasp Empire make their first official appearance in Collegium. Desperate, Stenwold elicits the help of a small group of his students – his niece Cheerwell Maker, his ward Tynish, the apprentice artificer Totho and Salme Dien, Prince of the Dragonfly Commonweal. Together they are to travel to the industrial city of Helleron with the purpose of gathering intelligence of the Empire’s plans. However, events quickly escalate beyond their control as the four young people are separated and taken deep into occupied territory. Struggling to stay alive they find some unlikely allies, which might contain the first seeds of an organized resistance to the unrelenting forces of the Wasps.

As said, the narrative of Empire of Black and Gold adheres quite closely to a pattern common to epic fantasy but the novel is generic as Tchaikovsky has created a world that is strikingly original. Instead of the usual humans, elves and orcs, Tchaikovsky’s world is inhabited by a number of tribes or nations whose distinguishing traits have evolved from various forms of totemism – all focused on different insects. The people of this world are humanoid but have taken on various insect-like qualities through their meditative Ancestor Arts:

Meditation was the Ancestor Art, the founding basis of all the insect-kinden. Whether it was meditation to make the Fly-kinden fly, and the Ants live within each other’s minds; to make the Mantids swift, the Spiders subtle, meditation was the Art that lived within them all, waiting to be unlocked.

Most children started this at eight or ten and took to it without trouble. All over the world Beetle-kinden men and women, and all the other races of mankind, sat cross-legged as she was now and opened themselves up to their ideal. Primitive peoples might have gods, and the Bad Old Days had their totem spirits, but sensible Beetle thinkers had conjectured the Ideal Form. All ideas, they said, possessed a most perfect theoretical expression, and what she bent her mind towards was the Ideal Beetle. Her people, all of them, across the Lowlands and beyond, has imagined and explored and refined the Ideal, drawn strength from it, for thousands of years, since long before the first word of history was written.

Each of the different kinden thus has different capabilities and physical traits derived from their respective Anscestor Arts, derived from their original insect totems. Another interesting aspect of Tchaikovsky’s world – an aspect that differs from the generic pseudo-medieval fantasy – is his incorporation of a revolutionary period of Enlightenment and modernity in the history of his world, something that is expressed in the distinction between the Apt and Inapt insect-kinden. The Apt comprise, among others, the Beetle-, Ant- and Wasp-kinden and this term refers to the races that have an aptitude for advanced technology and machinery. The Inapt comprises races such as the Moth-, Spidren-, Mantis- and Dragonfly-kinden; races that once were the masters of the world.

This difference between the Apt and Inapt is further embedded within the deeper history of Tchaikovsky’s world. Five centuries prior to the present story, the Lowlands were ruled by the Moth Empire; a refined and elitist cultured steeped in spirituality, mysticism and magic. In this culture, the Inapt races formed the social elite while the Apt kinden served as slaves. A revolution among the Apt overthrew this order and ushered in an age, not only of peace and prosperity, but also of philosophical enlightenment and modern technology. The distinction between the Apt and Inapt thus also represent a paradigmatic change in their world; a change from a predominantly spiritual to a materialist world-view. This is, in my opinion, one of the more intriguing and original aspects of Tchaikovsky’s world-building as it is somewhat rare to find an epic fantasy that takes place in a world caught in the throes of an industrialized modernity. In this respect, Empire in Black and Gold straddles both steampunk and epic fantasy.

Another prominent theme deals with the concept of racism and the concomitant issues of oppression and empire. One of the unfortunate consequences of the Ancestor Art is a tendency to insularity and racial prejudice among the different insect-kinden. Fx Mantids and Spiders hate each other with a passion, so does Moths and Butterflies while Wasps feels superior to everyone. These tribal affiliations also functions as a kind of caste-system (Matids are generally warriors, Beetles artificers and merchants, etc.) and half-caste children are, in this context, victims of the rampant and unquestioned racism that seem to exist among all the different kinden. It is thus highly significant that the protagonists several times are brought into situations where they are forced to confront and examine their own racial prejudice. Totho is half-caste and therefore suffers directly from a racial stigma that even his exceptional technological aptitude cannot erase. Likewise, Cheerwell’s preconceived notions are put to the test when she forms a connection with Archaeos, a young man of the now reclusive Moths. Tynisha and Salme Dien go through similar experiences in their character-development.

When it comes to the Wasps, this deeply ingrained racism has become inextricably intertwined with their aggressive imperialism. The Wasps represent the very worst of Empire: aggressive militarism, racism as well as a ruthless acquisition of territory and an equally ruthless exploitation of the people they subjugate. They enforce their rule through brutality and fear (even amongst themselves) and the manner in which their aggression and brutality is combined with an arrogant sense of racial superiority brings to mind the horrors that Nazism and Fascism inflicted upon the 20^th century.

Empire in Black and Gold is a very strong debut. It is a fast-paced and action-driven novel that nonetheless leaves plenty of room for character-development. Its primary strength is, however, the highly imaginative world that Tchaikovsky’s has created. The novel, however, has its flaws. I found that Tchaikovsky’s prose to be somewhat lacking in terms of the ability to generate the images necessary to make his world feel real and tangible. His prose is workman-like, perfectly adequate to the action-driven narration but decidedly lacking when it comes to descriptive imagery – I had to work very hard to image what his world would look like and this lack of texture is a bit of a shame because the basic concepts of his world are so intriguing. Flaws aside, Empire in Black and Gold is a remarkably strong fantasy debut and I for one am eagerly anticipating the sequels Dragonfly Falling and Blood of the Mantis.

- Trine D. Paulsen

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In Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective George R.R. Martin looks back on his impressive writing career. It contains short fiction from all phases of his career, covering more than three decades. Dreamsongs consist of 34 stories in different genres as well as a number of introductions where Martin reflects on a particular phase in his career. Because of the sheer size of the work, my copy tops 1200 pages, it is available in 2 parts as well. I read it in one volume. There is something to be said for splitting it up though. I can usually manage a decent sized book a week but it took me six weeks to read this collection. I can only read a couple of these stories in a row before I need a break. Not because it is boring or difficult. It is just the getting into a new story that I can’t do too often. Martin’s stories contain a lot, you need to let it sink in before moving on. On the other hand I can’t really imagine getting started in part one and then having to stop to get part two. The structure Martin chose for this collection is very clever. Once you get into it you’ll want to know what he came up with next.

There’s simply too much in this book to go into detail on each of the works so I’ll follow Martin’s structure for this review. Dreamsongs is divided into 9 parts, more of less chronological, each covering a phase of his career. Part one deals with his earlies writings. Marin calls them his apprentice works. One story was published by an obscure fan magazine, the others weren’t published until Dreamsongs appeared. None of them are particularly good, although you can see the developing writer shine through in some parts. It’s an interesting view into his early career though and I think Martin shows nerve to publish this stuff. Although, with his reputation, I suppose you can afford to.

The second part is dedicated to the first stories Martin sold to some of the bigger magazines. There’s a couple of gems there. I particularly enjoyed The Second Kind of Loneliness. A lonely and somewhat deranged main character from this story in a gloomy setting is something Martin excels at. In a way this section is Martin’s career in a nutshell. Two science fiction stories, a (futuristic) fantasy and a blend of horror and science fiction.

Part three is dedicated to the science fiction he wrote for a number of magazines in the 1970s. It contains the award winning and heartbreaking story A Song for Lya, as far as I am concerned one of the highlights of this collection. A number these stories are set in the same universe and were intended to be part of a series that Martin never got around to writing. These stories are also related to Martin’s first full length novel The Dying of the Light published in 1977.

In part four we take a closer look at some of Martin’s fantasy. This section contains the original Ice Dragon story, which was recently reworked into a children’s book (reviewed by Paul here). This version is obviously not suitable for children. Apparently the children’s book version states that it is set in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire. It isn’t mentioned in Dreamsongs and I can’t find anything in the story to confirm that either.

Martin’s horror stories are collected in part five. This section contains his award winning story Sandkings, a horror story in a science fiction setting, but my favourite probably is The Pear-Shaped Man. An other award winning story in which Martin manages to created a creepy atmosphere just from the fact that one of the neighbours of the main characters is odd. None of Martin’s horror stories are terribly original but all of them are very well executed.

One of the few science fiction stories that did get a sequel is the story about Haviland Tuf, an ecological engineer. Part six contains two stories about him. One is an early version of A Beast for Norn. This version was later rewritten for the collection Tuf Voyaging. In the second story, Guardians, we get to see a more sophisticated Tuf. Personally I found both the concept and the stories themselves very amusing but that may have something to do with my background in environmental science.

Martin’s time as a screenwriter in Hollywood is covered in part seven. It contains 2 screenplays. The Road Less Travelled was written for Twilight Zone. A shorter version of this screenplay was aired but Martin himself felt that it didn’t do the screenplay justice. He included the full version in Dreamsongs. The second screenplay, Doorways, was a pilot written for a series that was never produced. After reading so many short stories reading screenplays is quite a change of pace. There is only a brief description of actions and settings. Most of it is dialogue. It leaves a lot more to your own imagination in a way. I must admit it wasn’t my favourite part of the book. Maybe I am lazy.

No overview of Martin’s work can be complete without a look at the Wild Cards series, a series of novels set in a shared universe, co-written by different authors and edited by Martin. Section eight contains two of Martin’s own contributions to the Wild Card novels. The first dealing with the emergence of Turtle Boy, the second with a diplomatic trip of Xavier Desmond around the world. I am not familiar with the Wild Cards series beyond those two stories (for sample of a full Wild Card novel check out this review by Jeremy) but Martin chose two that are accessible without too much background information. Both these samples and Jeremy’s review have made me decide to check out some of these in the not too distant future.

Part nine contains a number of stories that don’t really fit into the previous sections. This section is again a mixture of horror, fantasy and science fiction. For the fans of A Song of Ice and Fire, this section contains the novella The Hedge Knight. The Skin Trade and Portraits of His Children, both horror stories are the highlight of this section for me.

You have to wonder at the timing of this collection. When this book was originally published it had been several years since the release of A Storm of Swords. Fans were impatiently waiting for A Feast for Crows and this collection was pretty unlikely to satisfy them. It seems Marin is not happy if he isn’t working on several projects at once. If you only know Martin from A Song of Ice and Fire this book is either a fabulous introduction into his other works or a complete disappointment.

For a reader like me, who has read several op Martin’s older novels as well, Dreamsongs is a chance to get to read the best of Martin’s short fiction. Most of it has been published in different collections, anthologies and magazines but this is the first work that gives us such an overview. It shows Martin’s versatility as a writer containing horror, science fiction, fantasy and even a story that could be called historical fiction. All in Martin’s dark, gritty style and all with realistic, well developed characters.

This collection is enormous. Maybe Martin went overboard just a bit when making his selection. On the other hand, there is so much good stuff here that I think I can forgive him this huge tome. It’s a great collection by a master of the trade. Something every fan of speculative fiction should have on the to read list.

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Broken is another book in the Women of the Underworld series, therefore to be able to follow this installment, it helps to be familiar with earlier books.

Here we return to the Elena, the female werewolf, introduced in the first book of this series. Elena comes to terms with her life as a werewolf. Her relationship with Clay as much improved, especially now she’s expecting a baby.

However, the half demon Xavier, calls in a favour. A simple job, all that’s needed is to steal the Jack the Ripper ‘From Hell’ letter. Sounds easy! Of course nothing is ever easy for Elena and when she accidentally opens a portal to hell, during the theft, her pack become responsible for dealing with killer zombies and disease running rampant in Toronto.

Personal Thoughts – Elena is one of my favourite characters in this series. She introduced us to the strong female characters in the Underworld series and I’ve very much enjoyed her quick wit and no nonsense attitude. She’s known for stepping up to deal with the difficult jobs and her high maintenance relationship with Clay, the werewolf who turned her, makes for interesting reading.

In this installment, Elena’s called upon by Xanier and finds herself stealing the ‘From Hell’ letter from another half demon. However, when she accidentally opens the portal to hell, she finds herself on the run from dangerous zombies and hunted by half demons. And if this wasn’t bad enough, she has to deal with over protective pack members, Clay and Jeremy, due to her being the size of a small whale.

Her journey through the pitfalls of problems the open portal brings to Toronto take the reader on an action packed ride as the pack deal with one disaster after another. Some new characters appear and some familiar characters return. However, it would have been nice to have Page and Lucas on board, as I felt they interacted well with the werewolf pack in earlier books.

As usual the author grabbed my attention quickly and drew me into her character’s lives. And despite Clay and Elena acting more loving towards each other (I did miss their clashing) they still felt like the two favourite characters I bonded with in the first book. My only complaint would be the baby issue, I’m not the maternal type so found the baby talk distracting and it curved the actions of Elena in a way that, for me, spoiled the action within the story a little. Overall this is another entertaining story by Kelley Armstrong and fans of her books won’t be disappointed.

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If you have become as jaded as I have become regarding fantastic fiction, even certain title choices causes you to avoid or at the very least postpone when you get to a novel, a blasé conditioning one goes through after one has been reading fantasy for an extended period of time, it is both an admittedly unfortunate and short-sighted habit, however has the strange quality of also being an effective way to avoid slush. One of these words is ‘Dragon’, which to my estimation hasn’t been a part of a novel worth reading’s title since Michael Swanwick’s Iron Dragon’s Daughter and prior to that John M. Ford’s excellent The Dragon Waiting: A Masque of History. This also goes past mere titles, as for me personally, dragons, in regards to being a major part of a novel or series (as in a character) has never been something that really inspires me to read about, a possible reaction to seeing essentially the same dragon by different name in ever TSR/WotC book featuring them for decades, and a rather painful admission that Gordon R. Dickson’s series of books featuring James Eckert rank as among my most painful reading experiences in my youth, an experience I blame for never picking up a Anne McCaffery effort until a decade later, as I still have memories of library visits where it seemed works dominated entire sections of the library, every other one entitled Dragon-this, or Dragon-that, Dragon-venom-cock, or what have you. Can anyone truly blame a respectable reader’s ongoing suffering from wyrmaphobic tendencies, especially when knowing I’m a recovering victim of reading the purpose-vacant, rigmarole, yet publisher’s jewel, ‘Eragon’? This malady later extended into a disdain for stories featuring any sot of animal companion, and especially those gifted granted extra-lingual capacities, which I attribute to a too healthy dosage of Mercedes Lackey when I was younger as well. There certainly have been exceptions – It was only last year when I read Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton’s severely under read Trollopian take on a Victorian society of Dragons – books that gets past my superficial screening process of avoiding tagged words, ”dragon’, ‘wizard’, “ring” (excluding Wolfe, Leguin, and King), and ”shannara” , among others, and now the beginning of 2006 brings another, as Naomi Novik’s meritorious debut, His Majesty’s Dragon (that’s Temeraire in the U.K, who btw, also get hard covers which will mot be available in the U.S.) proves worthy of the substantial push Voyager’s publicity department has been granting the release over the last couple of months; not in regards to agreeing with some of the comparisons being thrown about in the continued tradition of fly-by-night blurbs, but in terms of the bottom line, which is simply His Majesty’s Dragon is a more than worthy choice for those looking for a new series to indulge yourself in for the new year, a quality read about British Captain Will Laurence, and the hatchling dragon he names Temeraire, that to Laurence begins as a life-altering predicament that was at first merely a reluctant and even a self-sacrificing act of a dutiful and loyal officer of the Royal Navy, and what turned into one of the more engaging bonds in recent memory, and one that is equally interesting and thoughtful from both perspectives.

Novik chooses the time of the Napoleonic wars as her backdrop, and in our introduction into Novik’s world we are witnessing the conclusion of a naval battle, involving the HMS Reliant routing an out manned and French frigate, Amitie, reduced to a condition slightly more than a skeleton crew by disease hunger or both. To Laurence’s surprise his French counterpart did not relinquish the ship until the final outcome was even beyond fortuitous hope, a decision that at first was taken by Laurence as incompetent and irresponsible command.

Laurence would find himself in error however, as upon searching the captured ship, the desperation of the French was explained by its singular cargo, a dragon egg – one that’s about to hatch. The value of such a treasure and the implications and cost to the possessor of such a gift is Novik’s triumph in His Majesty’s Dragon. In Novik’s recasting of our history, dragons not only exist, but also serve as a contemporary air force. That in itself in no triumph, inserting dragons in such a manner is neither an element unheard of, nor particularly of interest, but Novik’s understanding of both the import and the potential of the interest peaking material in explaining the significance of a world populated with dragons in regards to the individuals directly impacted, and through them society as a whole, is as well and thoughtfully rendered — without drowning readers and rest of the plot in information dumps — as one could imagine. In Novik’s world dragons are bred, and the processes of the breeding are unique between nations and are among the most guarded of national secrets. While in Europe many of the dragons are bred for attributes of war, speed, size, strength, Novik touches on the rare qualities of the superior breeders in the Far East, where the Chinese and Japanese breed for intelligence and beauty, with knowledge unknown, to the west, in fact very few academics in dragon lore even know what the semi-legendary Imperials or Celestials of the Far East look like, the latter it is whispered granted the ability to level cities and Khan’s alike with kamikaze like timeliness and effectiveness. Now that the Asian pride moment of the review is completed, it should be noted that the accepting the responsibility of being an aviator, while viewed as honorable in the public’s eyes is an act of murder to social or potential social standing among the aristocratic and even the ‘gentlemen’ ranks. The relationship between dragon and rider is in most case until death, and the commitment is one that allows for essentially no private life or time for personal goals or comforts.

“An aviator could not easily manage any estate, nor raise a family, nor go into society to any real extent. They lived as men apart, and largely outside the law, for you could not punish an aviator without losing the use of his dragon”

“Though the men of the Corps were honored without question for their courage and devotion to duty, the prospect of entering their ranks could not be appealing to any gentleman raised up in respectable society”

Upon finding the egg, Laurence orders a draw to sew which crew members would attempt to harness the dragon upon its hatching, the trepidant, consummating act of a life-long and altering bond. Laurence includes himself in the draw, but with no small personal relief he is not the ‘winner’, a condition short lived, as the hatchling chooses to speak to Laurence first, in perfect English, its first words – ignoring the man chosen to harness him – with unexpected and poignant perception of and directed at Laurence:

“Why are you frowning”

The rest of the His Majesty’s Dragon depicts the growth of bond that will make Laurence’s first reaction a forgotten memory. After naming his friend aptly, after a French ship in our own history captured by the British in 1759, and a future British ship bearing the name fought in the Battle of Trafalgar, the duo would go into training to best serve against the looming threat of Napoleon, where not only will they learn the trade of aerial war craft, but it will serve as an illuminating experience for Laurence, as Novik sketches a bond that although indeed cultivated for combat, is more than that, the instances of Laurence reflecting on the times he reads to Temeraire, who is a voracious learner with keen interest in all manners of subjects, from stories of war and tactics, to mathematical theory, and find that although it is he who read the words aloud, it is Temeraire who often grasp the concepts and explains them to him. What is a dragon without a hoard? Aviators go to specialty shops that craft and sell different articles of jewelry of all shapes, sizes, stones, and price, all elements that are not looked over by a dragon’s vanity, which is an illustration of what I felt was one of the two strongest aspects of my introduction to Novik; the legitimate charm that runs continuous throughout out the story. Each scene is a learning experience for each, or both Temeraire and Laurence, and each scene carries with it a sense of a feeling of discovery. Laurence is both a comrade in arms, yet also father, and best friend to Temeraire, and Temeraire is absolute in his adamancy of his loyalty to Laurence. The dialogue between the two is believable and effectively instills the reader with a sense of true friendship between the two. The other element that Novik brings is the ability to covey relations, moods, and paint firm pictures of all the characters with very little excess or fat. Other authors would have felt inclined to turn the story Novik effectively told in 350+ pages into a 500-page exercise in fluff, which made only one’s personal time constraints the only reason to put His Majesty’s Dragon down. Also handy, at the end of the read you get a few pages of reference, as excerpts from a study of dragons that give the reader a nice summary of the different breeds of European dragons, there innate abilities, breeding combinations, and a brief note on Orientals.

I really enjoyed Novik’s debut, and plan on reading the sequels The Throne of Jade and Black Powder War both coming out in 2006, but would warn some of the aforementioned comparisons, which although is not an observation made to lessen the outlook of Novik’s work, I feel they are rather inappropriate. The three authors who are used as comparisons to this project on various publicity items are Jane Austen, Susanna Clarke, and Patrick O’Brian or some combination of. I have only read various non-fiction biographies from the latter so can offer no remark, but I have read more Austen than I care to admit in company, and absolutely loved Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and what His Majesty’s Dragon is not is version of Clarke’s vision with an added dragon element. Clarke brought Regency England to the reader with its ideals, and sensibilities, and mannerisms, with timely wit, that made the atmosphere and setting of Clarke’s work an achievement in itself. While Novik’s portrayal is more than adequate, and not a point of detraction, it’s not a comparison that I think admirers of Clarke would find naturally comparable at all, except that both novel’s backdrops are largely indeed in England and both are works of speculative fiction occurring and combining with our historical past. It’s not in the mold of Clarke or Stephenson in this facet, however, this probably has just as many relieved as it does otherwise.

What Novik’s work does offer is the integration of one of Fantasy’s trademark creatures into a worthwhile novel, which as noted, is hardly a common accomplishment, and does so with an allure that I think few readers will be able to avoid in, as somewhat akin to dragons of fantasy novels past and in the tradition of gaming, dragons have the ability to charm those around them, and Temeraire, the dragon from the Far East that was meant for Napoleon himself, is the most engaging of his species I have read about in fantasy and will no doubt charm readers.

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This story begins in the year 1681, with Isaac Newton, through a spectacular experiment discovering Philosopher’s Mercury. Then a few years later a dying French King takes the Persian Elixir of life so that he may continue to protect France from English invaders and soon after the child Benjamin Franklin witness’s a new science that puts him onto the path of learning. These important incidents focus the storyline as each character’s life unfolds after these major events change their lives. To eventually their actions bring them together either in person or through their actions to a dynamic conclusion to this first book in the series.

Benjamin grows up in Boston, apprentice to his brother as a printer. But he secretly reads the books of alchemy and science and creates strange devices that confound those around him. However, his efforts bring him to the attention of Bracewell, a strange unearthly man who threatens not only Benjamin’s life but his family and friends. He creates a communication device that inadvertently drags him into the war between England and France. And a terrible mistake gives France a weapon of mass destruction.

In France, King Louis is no longer the man he was before taking the Elixir. He’s possessed by a strange angel that communicates with him and protects him from injury. A young woman, Adrienne secretly loves science and mathematics, though it is forbidden for woman to learn these skills. She draws the attention of King Louis and gets drawn into his plot to destroy London. With the help of others who think the King possessed by demon’s, she plots to stop his war.

Benjamin flees to England in the hopes to finding Isaac Newton, the one man who can understand and possible stop the weapon Benjamin thinks the France holds. But will he reach the scientist in time.

Personal Thoughts – this story is vaguely based on the conflict in the 1700 between England and France. Characters in the story, Isaac Newton, Kind Louis, Benjamin Franklin and others give this story a familiar feel. However, the science of the world is both familiar and yet very different. Alchemy is utilised to create strange weapons and devices that are fantastical. Bracewell represents a strange race that remains shrouded throughout the story and appears only to thwart Benjamin in his efforts to discover and prevent the French weapon. The weapon’s created use nature as their source, so they are unusual. I expected guns using gun powder, whereas it’s some energy source pulled from atoms which fuel some weapons. This brings strangeness to the story that gives it a fantasy feel. I did find the ideas of Alchemy a little difficult to understand and this did distract me from the more interesting storylines of the characters. There is a dramatic ending to this first book, which left me wondering what more could be achieved. However, it left many unanswered questions too.

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