Customer Reviews

Scarab Path (Shadows of the Apt 5)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"The Scarab Path" is the 5th book in the 'Shadows of the Apt' series by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The Kindle e-book and softcover books are both 480 pages in length.

The main focus of this book is Che and Thalric (Wasp secret service). There are other familiar figures (as well as some new ones) from previous books, that sprinkle the character list, but in a somewhat lesser capacity.

*SPOILER*

Collegium's representative, Kadro, in the remote virtually forgotten city of Khanaphes (far eastern territories), has suddenly and unexpectedly gone missing. Master Stenwold Maker of the Lowlands, decides to send his niece, Che to go there as Collegium's new ambassador and try to find out what has happened.

Kanaphes as it turns out, is a city living in the past...very backward; resisting any and all attempts to get it or its citizens into the modern era. However, when Che gets there she finds her old arch enemy (quasi-ally) Thalric has arrived a few days before her. Together, in an uneasy alliance, they slowly begin to realize that all in not quite normal or as benign as it appears on the surface of this ancient metropolis. In addition, just to complicate matters, an old enemy of Khanaphes, the Scorpian desert tribes, decides to attack its long time foe (with the help, not unexpectedly, of a contingent from the Wasp Empire).

*END SPOILER*

Again, as with previous books in this series, Tchaikovsky is able, through adept writing, blend a fascinating story, featuring non-stop intrigue and clandestine plotting. The story and its mysteries slowly unfold leading up to immense and prolonged siege/battle at the end and some startling revelations about Khanaphes and its past.

I liked Tchaikovsky's frequent use of italics to convey characters inner most thoughts and thinking (while often verbalizing something completely different). This technique really helps with character development and gives the reader a deeper, more personal relationship with many of the main-players.

Again two good maps, however the Kindle edition maps are somewhat blurry and because of this, getting exact names and placements of locales was somewhat more difficult that expected.

Conclusion:

This is a magnificent story...arguably one of the best of this series. It's not often I've read books that are able to hold the readers attention consistantly throughout the entire work (and in fact, this applies to the entire series)...this, however is one of those books. 5 Stars.

Ray Nicholson

I enjoyed the desert theme as well as more details about the various kinden who populate this fantastic world. Everything from the violence to the mysteries was done in a trademark style. My only regret is that they killed one of the characters I was really looking forward to seeing more of! I won't spoil it by saying who!

The war between the aggressor Wasp Empire and the Collegium of the other states is over with a cease fire. Both sides have been devastated with many dead and a horde of wounded veterans needing assistance, but lacking funding to care for the discarded soldiers.

Cheerwell "Che" Maker struggles with the horrors of war though she was successful. Her Post Traumatic Disorder leaves her haunted and feeling displaced even at her home as her Aptness Daratyon has disappeared and assumed dead turning her into an Inapt Beetle Kinden. Her Uncle Sten, assigns her to escort academics to the bizarre city of Khanaphes, way in the beyond east as a diplomat of sorts. At the same time the Wasp Empress Seda begins her evil scheme to consolidate the power she lost during the stalemate and expand on that. Seda sends assassins to murder the one person who knows her entire plot, her former spymaster Thalric. He flees to Nem Desert where the arcane archaic city of Khanaphes lies.

The Scarab Path, the fifth Shadows of the Apt, moves away somewhat from the overt epic military fantasy of the previous four entries though their remains some large scale blood and gore battles, but is more introspective. The audience sees close and up front what the war cost even the heroes especially Che, the focus of this super story line as she evolves into an Inapt. Loaded once again yet sort of reloaded, fans will Salute the Dark opening of will relish Adrian Tchaikovsky's new arc as an unsettled peace has come to the Lowlands.

Harriet Klausner

This series is a heckuva lot better than you might think it would be. The steampunk-plus-everyone-has-insect-totems premise seems a little silly at first, but Tchaikovsky is a good enough author that he pulls it off, and pulls you into the story regardless; when all's said and done, it might just be that he suffers for his originality -- we're used to Elves and Orcs and so forth, but not to, say, Wasp Kinden, so these books seem a little strange and silly at first blush, but they're excellently done. If you even *suspect* you'd like it, take the gamble: my bet is you won't regret doing so.

If you're new to the series, don't start here, start with the first book, Empire in Black and Gold. This is the sixth book of a planned ten, and the middle volume of the second of three planned subdivisions within the series (the head, thorax, and abdomen, as it were).

It's tempting to describe the books in terms of other authors -- specifically, the steampunk aspect invites inevitable comparisons to China Mieville, albeit with less Marxist preaching, and the relatively "clean" tone is reminiscent of Robert Jordan, if he'd been willing to kill off major characters -- but Tchaikovsky is an innovative and imaginative author in his own right, and within the pages of these books he's written well-realized, complex and human characters moving through stories that have intriguing beginnings, page-turning centers, and climactic endings. If some of his tropes are a little well-worn (good servant to evil master, orphans discovering parentage, etc.), here they're well-written and well-wrought, so who's to complain?

The Great Wasp War has come to a lull, so this volume is a little slower-paced and more focused on character-building and world-building than the first four books were. Our Heroes (and Our Villains) find themselves emissaries to distant Khanaphes, the City of the Scarab Beetles (perhaps best described as the City of the Ancient Egypt Expansion Pack). Again, though, what seems a standard pulp-fantasy trope turns into something novel and interesting in Tchaikovsky's hands; the city's deliberate antiquity has an in-universe explanation, and the process of revealing that explanation serves as a vehicle for Tchaikovsky to give us a wealth of background detail as to the history and shape of his larger world.

It isn't all world-building, though, and fans of Tchaikovsky's action sequences and epic battle scenes will still find their meat here. The book's primary focus, however, is on character, especially the further development of Cheerwell, Totho, and Thalric.

Overall, if you've read the first four books and you enjoyed them, you'll probably like this one also. There's a slight shift of emphasis away from action and towards development, but it's only slight, and there's certainly promise of much more to come in the later books in the series. All in all, I highly recommend both this book and this series.

Before I even get into my review of this book, I should explain my past with this series. I first tried getting into the Shadows of the Apt series when book one, "Empire in Black and Gold," came out - tried, and failed. I thought the ideas were interesting, but the execution was a little too predictable even for me, and I gave up. I watched as successive novels came out, each one sounding awesome. I even read a few short stories set in this world of the Apt, but I never tried to go back to the full series.

And then book five fell into my hands. I could still remember the characters and world setting from the first book, but would that be enough for me to get through "The Scarab Path"? Just barely, and now I know I've missed out on some awesome reading. Comparing book one to book five, it's easy to see Tchaikovsky's growth and maturation as a writer. The action scenes are well paced, and there are plenty of them. But this isn't just an excuse to chronicle some series of RPGborn campaigns - there is no want on violence, and every scene serves to further the plot.

The only drawback of this novel is that it doesn't work as a stand alone story. If you've only read the back covers of the other four in the series, you know about the rise of the Wasp empire, and how by the end of book four the Wasps were halted, at least for now. In that respect, this novel is a new direction for the series. But without at least a basic familiarity of the cast involved, the Scarab Path would be confusing to navigate. Many names are just casually referred to, even when critical to the plot. In this novel we bring back Che and Thalric as our principal view point characters, with a mix of new and old supporting cast to round out the story narration. The story is set in the distant city of Khanaphes, a city consigned to myth where a strange kinden of beetles live their lives according to the laws of their mysteriously absent Masters. Che is there to find answers to the confusing questions she was left with at the end of the last book. And where Che goes, others will follow, all suspecting secret strategy in her visit to such a remote corner of the Nem desert.

"The Scarab Path" was a good read that kept me up late reading often. Its always fun to read a book that is so stock full of high magic (the Art of the Apt can be described no other way) but where the characters are blind to it, seeing only the fantastical of the rare low (Inapt)magic. A wonderful blend of steampunk and epic fantasy, "The ScarabPath" makes a good addition to the Shadows of the Apt series.