Book Review: "Lords of Uncreation" by Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

4/5 stars

*Spoiler alert!*

Lords of Uncreation brings to the end another fantastic sci-fi opera trilogy by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The third and final entry in the “Final Architecture” series wrapped up an outstanding story about humanity at war with moon-sized entities that destroy planets, also known as Architects. I heartily enjoyed the complex characters Tchaikovsky gives us in the “Final Architecture” series as well as the moral complexities of war explored, and the different forms life can (could) take in the universe.

This book brings to a nail-biting close a war on which humanity’s very fate hangs. Having discovered and taken over ownership of the Eye, an Originator tool allowing Intermediaries (Ints) to peer into unspace (a realm underlying the universe we know, of matter and life). The desperation of humanity brings to the fore an unfortunate plan to essentially kill all the Architects in their unspace nursery—located by the Eye to great fanfare—before the Architects can wipe out any more of humanity’s core worlds. Since the kibosh was put on a secret plan for humanity to become space nomads (see book two), this battle is even more consequential.

Idris, our favorite exhausted Int—who can’t sleep—is trying to hunt down the Presence, the entity that people going through unspace awake are rumored to be driven mad by, and which authorities attribute to the brain’s psychological reaction to going through a realm where there’s nothing. (Spoiler, but there actually is an entity that haunts unspace. The Presence is real and very, very terrifying.) Through his travails, he discovers that the Presence is protecting something or someone in unspace.

“He tumbled, clipped, out of control. Panicked, but then his whole life had been a kind of panic. From his childhood on ship after ship, fleeing the Architects, learning about planetside lives such as being a fisherman, which had seemed less realistic than dragons and wizards. Panicking every moment of the Intermediary Program at what they were doing to him, what he’d become, seeing all the others who weren’t making it through the procedures. Panic during the war, because what was war other than the whole human sphere panicking, faced with an enemy which couldn’t be fought? And afterwards, none of it went away. A life in the shadow of what he’d become, running away from all the people who wanted him to become something even worse. To be their slave. To be their collaborator in making more wretched victims. So his panic now was just baseline Idris.”

Let me just say, poor Idris. All he wants to do is rest, but the whole of humanity won’t let him. (Not to mention his own biology, since the process of turning him into a unspace-sensitive Int means he can’t sleep.) I think the ending was perfect for him in that respect. He gets the rest he needs.

When Idris confronts his friends with the knowledge he gleaned from his unspace travails, that he found the Architect’s masters and that they shouldn’t be looking to kill the enslaved Architects, no one listens. More accurately, no one really wants to listen, especially Ahab, the crusading Naeromathi who has nothing but hate for the Architects for destroying his species’ home world. And then there’s the problem of how to get past the monstrous Presence guarding them. Wouldn’t it just be easier to take away the master’s tool? (That logic made me sick, humanity looking to eradicate an entire species. I get that humanity was desperate, but still.)

As the plan to journey into unspace to end the Architects begin, Idris continues his quiet rebellion, encouraging Architects to rebel against their masters and help humanity defeat the larger enemy.

“He’d called out to the Architects, all of them. At least some of them had heard. At least some of them were trying one last rebellion. He knew they could. Why else would their masters have needed to punish them by scouring their home? Why else had they vanished for so long after he had spoken to them over Far Lux? Slaves, but not automata. All their masters wanted was the extermination of thoughts. That teeming, bubbling interference that threw all their long calculations out. And so: genocide upon genocide, through the long history of the universe, sending the Architects to wipe the slate clean. Ash’s people, the Naeromathi, countless other species over billions of years. And the Architects themselves, knowing only that they were being forced to some terrible task, had written their grief across the cosmos.”

What Idris and company find at the center of the universe truly made me shiver. Entities from a previous universe looking to get back their universe, with its different laws of physics. Life itself and the pressure sentient beings put on unspace stood in their way. The utter hatred expressed by these beings towards Idris and company’s universe still sends shivers down my spine, even as I write this review.

“Humanity had travelled between stars for perhaps two centuries. That was recent. Written human history was maybe six thousand years old and that was just yesterday. The earliest things that might be considered human had lived out their brief lives a few million Earth-standard years ago, and that was a past so close to Idris he could glance over his shoulder and look those apes in the eye. Complex life on Earth, half a billion years: a fleeting moment. Earth being formed, four and a half billion years: nothing. The first galaxies, ten billion years before that: an eyeblink. Because this was the center, the heart, and so time didn’t mean the same thing. All the moments of the universe’s history were just crammed together like the pages of a book, to be idly riffled through in an instant. All that time, they had been waiting.

No, not waiting. No idle. Working.”

Without spoiling the ending, let’s just say the action preceding the conclusion was utterly nail-biting. And Tchaikovsky was signature Tchaikovsky in making readers realize how small they are in the universe by making all his characters realize that and react to that revelation in different ways. While I am fond of Idris, Olli and Solace were definitely my favorite characters of the whole trilogy. Solace for her steadfast determination and her deep friendship with Idris. And Olli, because, well…she’s Olli!

“Olli didn’t like feeling humbled. She resented the implication that there were things in the universe she couldn’t just throw her weight and her Scorpion at, and make them get out of her way. But right then she confessed herself beat and settled in for a good long spell of humility.”

I’ll miss this series dearly and all of the inhabitants of this story. Just read the “Final Architecture” series. You’ll thank me later! (Book 1 is Shards of Earth.)

Happy reading!

--BookOwl