Many pretty good things have been said about this relatively new (to the US) series by Adrian Tchaikovsky so I decided to give it a shot. Well, Im glad I did.
Empire of Black and Gold is in some ways a fairly standard novel. However there is one key difference and that’s how the world works. The humans are indeed human, at least to an extent. There are several “ethnic” groups and they share some characteristics from the insect kingdom. The Beatles are hard working and tend to be stockier and the same trends across for the Wasp, Mantis, Moth and assorted other groups.
The story deals with the expansionist empire of the Wasps and the actions of a certain Beatle who has fought against the Empire in the past and who has been warning his city for over a decade about the Wasp Empire and their plans for the rest of the free world. His warnings tend to fall on deaf ears since most of the people in power tend to look inward and refuse to accept that an upstart group has the means or the aggression to do what he claims they do.
The world building is fairly interesting, it’s a cross between the medieval and a world with some “modernesque“ industry and the characterizations are nothing special though are solid. The magic is however pretty interesting. The Wasps have a “sting” which is a magical blast, the Mantis’s have martial prowess with swords, Beatles are industrious, Ants are arranged militarily and have physic connections to each other and so on.
Over all it’s an interesting story with a solid enough plot and some pretty cool action.
8/10
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