AUTHOR : ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY

       PUBLISHER : TOR

       PUBLISHED : 4 JULY 2008

       PAPERBACK : 624 PAGES

MAP OF THE LOWLANDS :


SUMMARY : The city-states of the Lowlands have lived in peace and prosperity for decades: bastions of civilization and sophistication. That peace is about to end. 

              In far-off corners, an ancient Empire has been conquering city after city with its highly trained armies and sophisticated warmaking . . . And now it's set its sights on a new prize.

               Only the aging Stenwold Maker, spymaster, artificer, and statesman, can see the threat. It falls upon his shoulders to open the eyes of his people – as soon a tide will sweep down over the Lowlands and burn away everything in its path.

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


MY THOUGHTS : 

NON SPOILER : 
                            This is the debut novel of the author of this series. I have to say he did a great job, this being his first novel as most of the time authors fail to stick the landing with their first book, like Stormcaller by Tom Lloyd,a lot of things were going on in that book still didn't manage to catch my fancy, I do admit the series got better with the second book but we are talking about the first, you understand.
                            Adrian really did a great job bringing all those characters and all the City-States of Lowlands and beyond to life, the story is full of characters with dubious past and uncertain loyalties so you are never sure what they are ultimately gonna end up doing. It is jam-packed with action, adventure, and political intrigue with exceptional character development arcs. Lots of characters to root for and fall in love with, lots of characters to first hate and then root for, and vise versa. A great mixture of steampunk and fantasy. 

SPOILER : This world built by ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY is populated by the insect-kinden who are humans but whose ancestors in order to survive in this harsh world full of predators which include giant insects the size of horses or bigger melded with the insects and inherited some of the attributes of those insects somehow,  creating the insect-kinden. So depending on the geography, the humans melded with different insects so there are several kinds of insect kinden. The giant insects barely figure into the plot which makes sense as the world has evolved and the people have been able to create machines that eventually led to the insects being redundant for most purposes but few. The technology is more of a steampunk kind. Airships, orthopters, heliopters, and various on-land automotives. Modern guns are not a part of it though, they mostly use swords and simple or upgraded repeating crossbows. 

                    You may find that the humans don't exhibit all the qualities of their insects which makes sense as they may be insect kinden but they are also human, capable of much more intellectually. There are kinden who are technologically savvy like Beetles, Ants, Wasps, etc. which are referred to as APT and the kinden like Moths, Mantids, Spiders, etc. are referred to as INAPT who don't understand the technology and can't work with it at all and lean more towards the mystical side of things which the APT kinden don't believe in at all.

                    You can tell a lot about the personality of a person in this world by their kinden, as belonging to a kinden also influences their personalities, that being said it's not always that easy to figure them out exactly. For example, BEETLE KINDEN are tough if not the strongest, SPIDER KINDEN are cunning and
manipulative(French cough cough), MANTIS KINDEN are honorable, and so on. Some kinden exhibit abilities as their insect counterparts which they call ANCESTOR ART, some can fly some can shoot fireballs, some can manifest claws, some kinden have a telepathic link, but most of the times these abilities are not uniform which makes sense, as human abilities are not uniform, for example, humans are not all Olympic athletes, but are there Olympic athletes? YES. So belonging to a kinden doesn't automatically make them capable of everything everyone else can do, some are more capable than others. 

                    In this book, the story revolves around Lowlands and Collegium which is a center of higher learning, progressive thinking, and the cultural heart of the Lowlands. The Lowlands contains several insect kinden cities of different kinden who mostly despise each other but stay out of each other's way, the lowlands has enjoyed a few decades of peace and prospered till now, as the Wasp Empire sets its eyes on the Lowlands as its next conquest. The Wasp Kinden are military kinden fairly new as an empire, three generations only, but mighty nonetheless, devouring city after city expanding their empire.  

                    Stenwold Maker of Collegium after witnessing the fall of the city of Myna by the Wasp Empire east of the Lowlands losing dear friends doing so has been warning his people, his colleagues at The Great Collage about the impending doom that is the Empire for seventeen years now in vain. In all that time he has become a master of the great college and a spymaster, agents deployed everywhere to keep tabs on the Empire.

                Stenwold's students who he is forced to turn into his agents, which was his plan all along but he has to do it prematurely by FastTracking his plans when the Wasps arrive in Collegium. His students include Tynisa, Stenwold's ward of dubious origins, Cheerwell Maker aka Che his niece, Prince Salme Dien aka Salma of the Commonweal north of the Lowlands who were in a twelve years war with the empire, and Totho a brilliant halfbreed artificer.

            Stenwold has nothing but a handful of agents to call upon against the empire, his goal is to unite the Lowlands against the empire which is easier said than done.

            I personally didn't find anything wrong with the story or the writing style, this being the first book in a long series you won't get all the answers or explanations but it's worth it. All in all, this is a great series to pick if you are into epic fantasy, an unusual but great mix of steampunk and medieval fantasy. 


CHARACTERS :

Descriptions of how I see the characters in my head or who could play the characters.

1.    STENWOLD MAKER

PATERSON JOSEPH.


  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeless_(TV_series)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paterson_Joseph

  2. CAPTAIN THALRIC 

      STEPHEN MOYER, You may remember him as 'BILL COMPTON' from the TRUE BLOOD TV series, In my opinion, his 'THE BASTARD'S EXECUTIONER' characters persona most compliments the character of  THALRIC.


 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Moyer
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bastard_Executioner

3. TISAMON :

    WHEN THE CHARACTER OF TISAMON WAS INTRODUCED I KINDA PICTURED STEPHEN AMELL, AS I HAVE MUCH MORE EXPERIENCE OF WATCHING HIM AS A KICKASS HOODED CHARACTER (ARROW TV SHOW) OR KEVIN MCKIDD WHO IS MUCH CLOSER TO TISAMON VISUALLY.



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_McKidd

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_(TV_series)


    4. TYNISA 

    KATHERINE MCNAMARA IS MY CHOICE.

    

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_McNamara

    5.    BALKUS

       DOMINIC PURCELL, YOU MAY KNOW HIM FROM PRISON BREAK OR THE FLASH AND THE LEGENDS OF TOMORROW AS MICK RORY. HE PERFECTLY COMPLEMENTS THE CHARACTER OF BALKUS.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legends_of_Tomorrow
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flash_(2014_TV_series)

    THAT'S IT FOR NOW, I'LL BE POSTING THE SUGGESTIONS FOR OTHER CHARACTERS WHEN I REVIEW THE SECOND BOOK IN THE SERIES, DRAGONFLY FALLING.