Empire in Black and Gold (Shadows of the Apt)

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Tisamon eventually beats her but she gave him a challenge no-one had for years and he acknowledges her. So overall, from the perspective of a reader on book four of the series at the moment, I think I find some of the later books more convincing and engaging than this one. Book 2 I remember being quite special, but the series lost me around book 3 or 4 for reasons I can put my finger on.

Thus, the Beetle-kinden (each race is a “kinden”) are the engineers of the world; the Ant-kinden are excellent soldiers because they share a single mind under battlefield conditions; and the Butterfly-kinden are extremely beautiful, rare and magical. As the story progresses the pace picks up and the tension begins to build, it is a sign of a good author when you begin to feel aprehensive about the characters being harmed, and Adrian accomplished this feat very well.And that is easy to overlook based one how excellent every single character is no matter which side of the conflict they are on or how little or big their part is. The twist to give all the factions aspects of insect behaviour seems a hard one to get your head around at first, but makes everyone distinct and interesting to follow. With the city quickly falling Stenwold and his Ant-kinden friend Marius are joined by Tisamon, a Mantis-kinden and the last member of their group, and they fall back to Myna's highest airfield, their retreat shielded by a squad of Ant-kinden soldiers led by Marius.

Lets get into the synopsis: 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 neighbors. The structure of the novel starts with an opening chapter set around 18 years in the past before shifting to the present and beginning the plot in that time period.I find it more difficult these days to stick with a book in which the villains are all torture and evil all the time. You see the city fall, out on the streets as Stenwold flees the city and then from above as he watches out of the back of an ornithopter. The author also managed to add depth to the conflict by presenting a character from the enemy, Captain Thalric, who is a Wasp officer working against the rest of our characters. Of course, all types of people show up in every land, but how they deal with the types allows for a lot of diverse conflict situations.

A world where the melding of technology, industry, and the traditional fantasy elements we are familiar with is at near perfection. This excellent book is about a cruel misogynistic empire in the east that is step by step taking over and enslaving the western lands, while the powers that be turn a blind eye to the suffering and pretend it'll all be OK, it couldn't possibly happen in their lands. Ben Allen's performance was quite good, especially in correctly capturing distinct male and female tenors.

Stenwold Maker is an elderly Beetle who saw the city of Myna fall to the Wasp-kinden — that is, to the Empire — in his youth, and has spent his life trying to make certain his own race does not fall into slavery before the rapidly advancing war machine.