Shards of Earth

Brain off head empty starship go bang bang

Despite having lots of elements that should make for a great genre space opera (a motley crew of mostly enjoyable characters, interesting world building/political landscape, a variety of textured alien species, and tangible stakes for the characters), Shards of Earth fails to rise above the chaff and distinguish itself. Solid, entertaining, but also disappointingly safe and predictable.

Regrettably, Shards of Earth is also long winded and repetitive. Maybe if the series had been edited down in to two books, I'd be more likely to return to it. Alas, 1500+ pages total, and an ending to this first book (which seriously could be considered nothing more than an introduction) that left five times more questions unanswered than it tied-off, doesn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence in me. It didn't help that Tchaikovsky uses a fair amount of modern day vocabulary and turns-of-phrase in his dialogue, which is a personal bugaboo of mine.

Tchaikovsky reminds me of a more action-oriented and fun version of Alistair Reynolds. The unspace elements specifically reminded me of the time travel element of Barrington J. Bayley's 1974 novel The Fall of Chronopolis. I guess what I'm saying is that you can see a lot of through lines to Tchaikovsky's forerunners, and this work falls solidly within genre expectations and tropes. Good thing that Tchaikovsky is so prolific a writer, as I'm sure there's something of his that will agree with me more.