I’ve been meaning to read more Adrian Tchaikovsky for a while now, first because a number of my friends really like his stuff, and then also because I read his book The Doors of Eden and really enjoyed it. (The character work in that one was hit or miss, but the speculative biology was enormous fun in directions you rarely see done well that also aimed directly at my interests, so I had a great time with it.)

The joy of finding a very prolific author is that there’s a ton of stuff to read, but the difficulty of finding a very prolific author is figuring out where to start. Handily for me, this one was on the short list for the Hugos this year! And it was my top pick – I really loved it.

( More details -- no spoilers beyond the first few chapters )