Dragonfly falling is the second in the quite large Shadows
of the Apt series, and follows on from Empire in Black and Gold, which I read
perhaps over a year ago. It's a fantasy story, set in a fictional world with
various human races, called kinden, who are named after insects/arachnids and
have related natural abilities, strengths and weaknesses.
It follows on more or less immediately from the events in
Empire in Black and Gold, with the Wasps continuing their military expansionist
ways and Stenwold doing his best to persuade the disparate other nations to
collaborate (think of Greek city states uniting against Persia).
The cast includes those of the first book but there are also
a reasonable number of additions and quite a lot of points of view. Mr.
Tchaikovsky does a very good job of using the wide range of perspectives to put
together a coherent and broad-ranging narrative. Or, to put it a
non-management-speak way: the story's big but still easy to follow.
One possible disadvantage, however, of so many varied
viewpoints is that there's less room for character development because each
character gets less time. Tynisa, Tisamon and Totho all progress, as does
Thalric, but Salma, after lots of early action, seems to drift into irrelevance
later on and Scuto never gets past being a gruff and ugly chap.
I also liked the way that the war is described, both
regarding battle scenes and the rapid advances in technology which have put a
premium on invention and manufacture. On the strategic front, there's a really
nice sense of the war being hard fought and slightly unpredictable.
It's been a while since I bought the previous book, but I suspect I'll buy the third rather sooner.
Thaddeus
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