High flying science fiction
—
Cricket has a very big problem on his hands: a strange little man, white as a corpse, has been shot, and he thinks he knows who the killer is. The dead strangers’ friends, as alien to Cricket as they can be, want him to take them to his monastery, the Apiary, so that they can consult with the hidden intelligence there, Bees. Accusing the wrong faction in Cricket’s post-technological world will only bring down violence on the Apiary, but who else could it be but the violent Griffins, a clan of strongmen who tithe the countryside to their hearts’ content? Before long, Cricket will see the very big problem go beyond anyone’s control when the Factory, where the uncanny but familiar Dogs are made, take on everyone else in a fight for control of the future.

This is high flying science fiction that is both science-y and fictional. Don’t worry that it’s the third book in the series, as the action starts from the first chapter and doesn’t let go. The only fly in this ointment, however, are the huge infodumps which I’m sure I haven’t read before in Tchaikovsky’s other books, or if they were there, they were more subtle; here, they derail the narration for a bit and tbh if you skip them, who’s gonna know? Told from plural voices across the landscape, echoing the secret narrator that sits at the very centre of the book, this is a spare but rounded novel that transports you directly into a very plausible future based on our tyre fire of a present.

I didn’t realise this was book 3 in the series and as I was enjoying the writing style and story I decided not to finish until I’ve read the other two books. Looks excellent

Having enjoyed Dogs of War and Bear Head, I was genuinely excited to return to this world. Unfortunately, Bee Speaker fell a bit flat for me. The problem I had was the repetition of action across multiple POV's and the continuous inner monologue of the characters. Much of the first half could have been condensed into a few tighter chapters without losing impact.
I would still recommend Bee Speaker for Adrian Tchaikovsky's writing, but it wasn't for me.

One of the main reasons I keep returning to this author’s output is the intelligence that permeates his writing. The Dogs of War series is one of my favourites anyway – and Bee Speaker has reinforced that. Post-apocalyptic chaos is a sci fi favourite trope – to the extent that there are familiar rhythms and themes that generally appear. What I particularly appreciated this time around is that Tchaikovsky completely understands those themes – and then goes and takes them by the scuff of the neck and gives them a determined shake.

Proof of this is what occurs when the charismatic hero – who has championed the trip from Mars to Earth – finally gets to accomplish his mission. It’s clever and unexpected – but the story then rushes forward and every time another twist emerged – I found myself thinking, ‘Of course – that’s exactly what would happen, given the prevailing conditions on Mars, compared with Earth.’

I loved this story. There needed to be a fair amount of explanation as to how the world was currently working, but that was woven within the story and relayed to the reader in the viewpoint of the nine or so main characters. So not only did I get a ringside seat as to what was going on – I got a variety of opinions on what was happening. There are few authors with the talent to provide such a large cast of nuanced, sympathetic characters in this plot-driven narrative, which meant I kept turning the pages to discover what happened to whom.

Though once again in this series – it isn’t the humans who take centre stage, but the bioengineered creatures. Wells and Irae stole the show in my opinion, especially Irae, whose sharp-edged aggression is in stark contrast to Wells and Ada’s communal efforts. As with the previous book in this series – I appreciate that Tchaikovsky never forgets these aren’t humans when giving them speech. Wells’ thoughts and attitudes always reminded me that he is a dog, whereas Irae’s reptilian metabolism and temperament is hugely affected by temperature.

I finished this one very much hoping that Tchaikovsky will decide to revisit this fascinating world when the situation has had time to change the environment. And the good news – you can pick up this book without having had the pleasure of reading either Dogs of War or Bear Head. The situation has moved on to the extent that none of the original characters have any impact on this narrative. Highly recommended for sci fi fans. While I obtained an arc of Bee Speaker from the publisher via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
9/10

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was a great, fast paced sci-fi which scratched the itch in my brain. The plot was easy enough to follow and I loved the alternating between perspectives which is always a good addition in a sci-fi.
Would recommend to anyone wanting to continue the series.

There are two types of world ending stories. There are those that imagine the ultimate cataclysm be it immense natural disaster or human (sometimes Vogon) foible that wipes every one of us out – showy and reminding us that everything has an end. But another just asks us can you imagine all of this stopping – the net, the cities, electricity on demand, health care and what happens then? Strip us of our daily routines and conventions what do we become – usually leather wearing and violent but it also asks us questions of how do people react under extreme pressure. Do we give in to our more selfish sides or can we find a way past? Indeed rather than the mysterious future are we actually asking ourselves these questions to highlight the problems we face today? In Adrian Tchaikovsky’s cracking science fiction novel Bee Speaker we have a story that plays with the familiar structure of these latter tales but has some fascinating spins on the ideas and question what actually makes humanity work?

To recap in the future Earth governments and corporations had begun to experiment with modifications of animals and humans. Dogs were just one species to uplift giving them enhanced strength, intelligence and even speech to create ever more loyal foot soldiers. Humans were modified to live and work on Mars in a low oxygen and gravity world. Increasingly though the two worlds grew ever more distant from one another. Mars by a mixture of nature and design became a far ore co-operative place. Earth grew inwards and then increasingly silent as disasters fell on top of disasters. The cities were emptied and small settlements banded together (or warred) using the dying remnants of technology to survive. Then Mars finally heard earth cry for help and a small team are sent…things very quickly go wrong.

Rather than one continuous series the Dogs of War series I think is best thought of a series that explores a world of uplifted animal bioforms and chooses a articular story or theme to focus around. I think Bee Speaker could work very well as a jumping in point and then you could delve into the past to find out a bit more of this world’s history. They’re very good books but this is both a fantastic read but also explains the history without too many big spoilers on the previous world. At one point our non-human characters remark on a certain ape franchise history and while this series explores things very differently, I think this set of tales offers that kind of flexibility now as to the type of stories it can tell and the order you visit them in..

In many ways this novel plays with the standard concepts of post apocalyptic science fiction but nothing is quite delivered as we usually expect. Technically Mars is invading Earth but the Martians are genetically modified versions of humans and bioforms. Yes, there are warrior groups but Tchaikovsky has given them a 21st century makeover as to how they originated and even their cosiety isn’t quite as simple as other versions have created. There is even a monastery keen on preserving the knowledge of the past and they too keep a huge secret. Long-term SF readers will find many nods t the past but its all being replayed differently and with all these elements coming into conflict with one another to ask us as readers a question. Are we doomed?

Aiding this are the characters we will meet along the way. Our Martians are a very interesting mix Ada a human is unfortunately quickly poleaxed as her modifications to gravity and atmosphere do not work. We meet Wells a biform loosely based around a dog who certainly doesn’t look like one you’d want to rub their tummy if you value your fingers but is also a skilled comms engineer and finds Earth’s biosphere of smells and noises overwhelming her ability to think. Finally, there is a the mysterious Irae very much chaotic, does what they want and keeps us guessing as to her nature in many ways. These well-meaning people have come to earth to help and found the planet unwelcoming on many levels and I really liked how Tchaikovsky explores how lifeforms even closely related may find a earth atmosphere soon very off putting. But by making them the central cast we also get to see behind their physiology and initial chaotic interactions they’re trying to help they just perhaps are a little too optimistic that people would want to be helped. Their very super optimistic and charismatic leader Tecumo is the kind of guy who can get people together to do things but very quickly we find four people changing a a world is a bit much. It’s a good counterpoint to so many rugged individual SF tales that imagine that just with the right attitude you can change the world.

On Earth the humans are too compelling. Our Martians soon meet a young monk named Cricket who is soon out of his debt with aliens and warlords but has a battle between his instruct for survival and morality to work through which soon becomes a recurring theme in the story. Our warlord is named Leon and wears a crown and has a throne but look more closely and underneath the standard warrior mode is a more thoughtful person and that in particular comes across the key character of Serval his wife who is very keen that this group don’t fall into standard barbarism and we find a rich culture of the women in the group working together which is not something we often see in these type of stories. There are also geocentric older women to keep an eye on a witch and a chatty villager. Everyone has secrets and all interestingly fall back into the wider themes of the book.

With all these groups tension rise and warlords, strange monasteries, aliens and a mysterious bioform factory are not going to be safe places for a misunderstanding and there are those a plenty. Things go wrong as everyone is suspicious of one another and when everyone has guns that gets messy and dreadful. Action when it happens is facts and brutal and the feeling of a war on the horizon gets ever closer. What you don’t quite expect is the form that eventually takes and then that big question arrives. How do humans survive - is it night or just possibly enlightened self interest as an old alien ambassador once said? Look more closely at our groups and we have forced of power, industry, knowledge, science and more circling around each other and none on their own is enough to shape a world. So often post apocalyptic fiction focuses on how one group destroys all others. Here the interesting question is how could they possibly work?

A story that explores the power of co-operation and the dangers of when that isn’t offered or taken up is really interesting and throw in strange characters, a sense of humour and a really propelling narrative style that for me is just as much a character as the main cast and this is a story I just kept finding more to enjoy. Several surprises, a sense of compassion and also wonder at the power of science what more is there to ask for? There are even hints we could revisit this world again and perhaps even more interesting stories await. It is very strongly recommended!

Bee Speaker is the third novel in the science fiction series Dogs of War (it is important to note that the three books are standalones), written by Adrian Tchaikovsky, published by Head of Zeus. A fast-paced story that smartly plays with a huge cast of characters in another example of Tchaikovsky's rich imagination, almost bordering the science fantasy territory; the premise of throwing a mismatched crew into a hostile place, taken to the extreme, and incredibly executed.

A cryptic distress signal from Earth draws a crew of genetically engineered Martian Bioforms to start a mission on the planet where all originated; however, from very own first moment, things will go really wrong, turning it into chaos, and having the Martians to deal with the different factions running on this part of the world. A society that comprises such varied groups as an order that reveres the Bee intelligence, Techno-feudal warlords, an old remnant of tech known as the factory and even some really old individuals; a really unstable world where violence is a common answer and where our crew will have to their best to survive.

Part of what makes Bee Speaker such a really interesting experience is how Tchaikovsky manages to weave together the nine different POV characters: relatively short chapters, many times describing the same situation from the head of other character, highlighting the differences in their background and how that influences their lines of thought. Each POV has a characteristic voice, from Irae, the reptile bioform, much more prone to violence, to Wells, the bioform that was meant to be the communication operator of the mission, passing by humans as the brother Cricket; all of them are easily recognisable and unique. This particular narrative style can become a bit chaotic by moments, but I personally enjoyed how it helps to create a contrast between the characters, allowing us to learn much about them by their answer to certain situations.

The worldbuilding is another of the strengths of this book: a post-technological disaster Earth where different factions survive, with remnants of the old tech; I love how in this situation, the line between technology and magic is so blurred, as when the knowledge is lost, advance technology is indistinguishable from magic. This hostile place puts most of the groups in a pretty much precarious situation, and the Martians are outside of their element, having to learn fast.
The pacing is fast, partly motivated by the short chapters, which invite the reader to continue to learn what will happen next; you can easily devour this book because the author is always giving you another treat. While the ending is a bit in the predictable side, I think it is still a great conclusion, putting the foundations to maybe a follow-up novel in the same part of the world.

Bee Speaker is a great science fiction novel, a standalone instalment in the Dogs of Wars series that plays the best with its strengths, another proof of how wild Tchaikovsky's imagination can be. Another of the highlights of the year for me!

Do you know the feeling of starting a hard SF novel and not understanding anything in the first chapter? Yep, that was the first chapter of this one, reading the thoughts of our presumably friendly distributed bee intelligence. It took a few more chapters of other POVs to get a grasp on the setting. Cricket, the monk, was more relatable. There is also Deacon, the dog bioform… Deadon is a Good Dog! And then we move onto other humans and more bizarre bioforms. Remember the previous story? Mars comes to Earth! They are looking for Bees and they want to help. Not so easy when what remains on Earth is more akin to a Mad Max movie.

Pretty, if somewhat ominously spoilerish book cover.
Yes, you should read the previous novels/novellas in this world for context.

I liked the characters and the setting. Irae probably being everybody‘s favourite. I liked the plot. But for some reason that I haven‘t been able to identify yet, the story did not grab me. I stubbornly plodded through the first third of this and then started to skim heavily until the last few chapters, which I read a little more thoroughly again. Yes, good story and good ending with a hopeful outlook and all loose ends neatly tied up. But somehow this just dragged fiercely for me.

I can’t say why didn’t I like this as a whole. There was just not enough… forward momentum? A red thread? Too many POVs? I‘m not sure. But I was definitely very bored most of the time, despite liking the story. I had looked forward to more interesting exploration of Bees‘ personality. If that happened, it was definitely too late for me and too little to notice during my extensive skimming.

Definitely not as lively and captivating as the first two. Therefore, sadly only ⭐️⭐️½.

If you are a Tchaikovsky fan and you have read the previous two stories in this world, go for it! Mileage might vary.

I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher or author through NetGalley. All opinions are my own and I was not required to give a positive review.

As a fan of Tchaikovsky's speculative fiction, as soon as I saw his name I requested the book without looking further into it. A few pages in and I realised that this is the third book in one of his trilogies that I haven't started yet. So although the writing style, characters and world building is excellent as usual I am missing the finer points of the previous plot.
I would always recommend his books and, even though I will not get around to this one for quite a while, I saw the potential in only the first chapter.

You know what? I sometimes struggle when Adrian Tchaikovsky puts out a new book. Because I tend to explode with breathless enthusiasm, and then wonder whether I'm overdoing it. The problem, though, is that I have to keep doing it, because the man keeps turning out truly excellent work. Annoyingly, therefore, I have to say that with Bee Speaker, he's done it again.
This book is the third in a series that started with Dogs of War, which was probably my favourite story of 2017. You can read it as a standalone as well, I think, but it definitely helps to have the context from Dogs and 2021's Bear Head. Because this is a story of a world that's broken, and about the results of best intentions in trying to fix it from far, far away. Because this is a post-collapse Earth. One where we all just fought each other a little too long, and a little too hard. Where hubris and cruelty edged out empathy and humanity, where faith and humanity lost out to CEO's burning rainforests to try and make themselves immortal. But, it's a world surrounded by marvels. Because before things got out of hand, there was Mars. A Mars colonised by genetically engineered life, and regular people, who managed to survive the collapse of Earth, build something together in the harshest conditions, and who are now casting an eye back toward where they came from. Or at least, some version of them did. Because the people who live on Mars, these days, are different to how we might remember them. But they're still people. Even the ones who aren't.

That includes a very diverse cast indeed, a crew of adventurers looking to answer a call for help from Bees. The distributed intelligence called Bees, you see, helped save Mars once, when it was falling into collapse, and now a version of Bees is somewhere on Earth, calling for help. And so help is coming. Help looks like a reptilian sniper with an attitude problem, who can dial their own internal temperature up and down to move from cold strategy sessions to explosive action at the twitch of a dial. And A Dog, a canine hybrid originally built for war, now looking to build something new. And a couple of regular humans, whose ability to survive on the grounds of post-Collapse earth is rather open to question. Because this isn't the place their ancestors left, no. There's shades of A Canticle for Leibowitz here in a monastery that worships Bees, in the raiding gang of bunker dwellers obsessed with their own ideas of chivalry, while holding a dark secret in their hears, in the Factory, a place which keeps turning out Dogs, both as protection and as a means of influence, even when they no longer quite fit in a world reduced to subsistence agriculture in the ruins of abundance.

Man, Tchaikovsky has a lot going on. He's always had big ideas, and this is definitely a whole mixture of them. But it's also an adventure, as our band of adventurers try to help, and even as they work on making things better, the sparks they use to do that may set the world on fire. The story combines high-concept thought with some adrenaline-soaked action, with a dash of philosophy and a desire to ask big questions. As both the Martians and those they've come to help struggle with whether they want help, whether they should help, what happens next - and in some cases, what the consequences of action will be. Because four travellers may change the world, and not necessarily for the better. In fairness, the characters...oh, Tchaikovsky has always had a gift for off-kilter viewpoints, and here we are again, as he puts us into heads which are familiar, in a way, and also strange in others, with drives we can't always entirely fathom, but where understanding is always seemingly just within reach. It's smart, and its different and it may give you a headache.

The post-apocalypse narrative carries a familiar framework, if perhaps not a familiar conclusion, and the paths wended through the story are replete with both surprises and moments of genuine wonder. It is, in a word, a Tchaikovsky book, and as with all of them, it's a bloody good time, and definitely worth picking up.

The end of the world has been and gone – give whoever wrote that blurb a payrise! Following on from Dogs of War and Bear Head, we skip forward again further into the future – generations, this time. No single major catastrophe caused the collapse of Earth’s civilisations, more a death of a thousand cuts: climate, plague, greed. People survived, but society did not, nor technology – not really.

But where the upheaval ended the home world, Mars and its colony managed to survive and overcome.

Having just read Bear Head, I somehow thought this book might bee (sic) about (minor spoiler) Bees’ journey into the wider universe. But instead the book starts with a travelling monk-like figure, Cricket, and I was instantly reminded of Nghi Vo’s Singing Hills cycle. It doesn’t really last, and this is a much nastier world in many ways. Throw in some Mad Max, perhaps, with various gangs ruling their territory with violence. And then the Martians arrive…

Answering a broadcast plea for help, four of the Martian colonists – two human but much modified, and two Bioforms, also more modified than their terran equivalents – arrive on the mother world. To say things do not go according to plan – well, that’s sort of how story-telling works 😉

I really liked the time jump here. Through the first two books we’ve seen the set up and initial fallout of the bioforms project, and now this leap forward lets us once again track how changes play out in the longer time frame. There is some interesting commentary about reliance on tech, and how the uber-rich deal with the world, without these being the main narrative. In terms of development, though, there’s a strong logic and flow to it all. I would, perhaps, have liked to delve even more into it.

The story follows several point-of-view characters. We have our visitors from Mars, the inhabitants of the monastery not-quite-worshipping Bees, a separate group maintaining the bioform output from the Factory, and then the thugs from the Bunker. Any one of these could have filled the whole book, and if I’m honest I didn’t wholly ‘click’ with any of them. Perhaps the naivety of several didn’t work for me?

Another minor gripe is the way the ‘big reveal’ is teased and teased again, hinting so frequently at The Thing You’re Not Being Told Yet it was borderline irritating. The narrative dives between the groups and also flashbacks, revelling in pulling away just at the point of information. There are some shockers, but somehow this approach lessened them for me a little.

Oh, how I grumble, when overall this was a very enjoyable read and an excellent addition to the series. I somehow thought this would be more ‘final’ in wrapping things up – Rex, Honey, Bees, all having their spotlight – but instead the door is not quite closed. I would absolutely read more in this universe, whether backtracking to fill in some of the intervening years, or finding out more about this post-collapse society, or who can even imagine where the next multi-generational leap forward would take us?! Fingers crossed, we might one day find out.

I received this as an ARC from Netgalley

I loved the previous two books in this series and although I liked this book, I don't think I loved it as much. I found the middle of the book a bit of a slog to get through. I loved some of the themes in this book and I always am amazed how the author really seems to get in the mind of these alien thinking creatures that he creates. I loved all the bee terminology used when in the perspective of the DisInt think I would have prefered a bit more action sooner. There were some twists at the end that I didn't see coming and some that I did. The author continues to be a favourite of mine and an autobuy.

The extremely prolific Adrian Tchaikovsky has a lot of balls in the air, publishing about three novels a year at his current rate. If you asked what his major preoccupations were, then high on the list would be exploring non-human intelligences, and often those of evolved or uplifted animals. Bee Speaker is the third book in his occasional Dogs Of War sequence, about animals uplifted to human-level intelligence, and initially an exploration of their rights. These are books that proceed in the same universe, though, and this is set over one hundred years after the previous one, where Mars declared independence and Earth suffered a crisis. Here, Mars is answering a distress call from Bees (uplifted bees which have become a formidable distributed intelligence) and has sent a squad to help. It all goes terribly wrong almost straight away.

Bee Speaker takes a while to coalesce, partially because it's been a while since I've been in this narrative world, and the scenario is also brand new. The rescue squad (two humans, a dogform and an uplifted reptile which seems to be largely an alligator), are solid protagonists as they discover the world as much as we readers are. However, there is a local monk - Cricket - who shares a lot of early narrative lifting whose viewpoint is naive and quite tricky to get into. This is also Tchaikovsky playing in a post-apocalyptic sandpit, and so we have bunker folks with regulation sexist oligarchy foundations. This might also be one of the first times he has played with mycelial networks for another strand of the story. It all turns out to be quite a small conflict with the potential for greater disaster, and once the conflict kicks in, then it is pretty propulsive (though the rescue party splitting up at a key period is more out of a dumb horror movie than his usual smartly plotted work).

Bee Speaker is a nice, unexpected addition to this series - and gives Tchaikovsky the opportunity to play with reptile minds, and develop the idea of Bees, both as a real and virtual distributed intelligence. He writes the culture clash between the worlds well, and certainly gives himself enough room to toy with new concepts, but as ever it stands or falls on how good its central story narrative is, and happily yet again Tchaikovsky has laid out a compelling tale to hang his chamelonic alligator network analyst and mushroom witches on.

thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review! <3

’We will teach them to dream’

Bee Speaker is the third entry into Tchaikovsky’s Dogs of War series, and unfortunately I did not enjoy it as much as its predecessors.

This is not to say that it was a completely unenjoyable book. I very much liked reading from the perspectives of Ada, a Martian Humaniform, Wells, a Dogform, and particularly Irae, a Dragonform, who had an incredibly unique viewpoint, and whose fluctuating moods (due to their body temperature) kept their chapters feeling fast-paced and engaging. The writing and prose were consistently good, and while I did think the book could have been shorter, the pacing was mostly well-done.

My overall issue lies with the scope of this book. What I loved about Dogs of War and even Bear Head was their focus on the politics of Earth, and humans dealing with change and societal upheaval in the face of powerful technologies like the Bioforms and conscious AI’s. Tchaikovsky has done so many space operas and far-future sci-fi’s that I was really taken by this series’s plot taking place on Earth (and sometimes Mars), and being set in our near-future. I was disappointed, and slightly irritated, that this book fell into the former typical cliche that Tchaikovsky and so many sci-fi authors have done before. Bee Speaker, in my opinion, removed most of what made this series so unique. If it wasn’t for the Bioforms, this really could just have been any other space opera.

This lack of USP was exacerbated by the stories focus on Bees, the Distributed Intelligence that has been hanging over the plot since the first book. Being a conscious and sentient ‘AI’, Bees to me has very little personality, and thus my interest in her is next to none. It is, for me at least, almost impossible to take interest in the stakes of a story revolving around an entity that I know has millions of other copies of herself elsewhere. And even if I’m not meant to root for Bees, even if I’m meant to root for the humans populating Earth after its climate collapse (another uncreative stereotype - think Mad Max with dog-people), those people were unlikeable and their POV’s lacked character and charisma. As I said before, I did care for the Martian crew, but their chapters were broken up by pages of, to be blunt, boring nothingness.

Overall, Bee Speaker gets 3/5 stars. This is definitely the weakest entry in the series for me, but I am still holding out hope for the next one!

So I haven’t read the first book in this series so was worried I wouldn’t enjoy it. The book is brilliant and I’ve bought the other books in the series to help understand the world more as these characters are just really well written and I do feel a connection to them and care about them a lot

Filled with that trademark hopefulness, morality, and dark humour, this is a wonderful return to the world of Bioforms. Bees has always been my favourite character in this series, and I was a bit disappointed that the whole novel wasn't narrated in their voice (which is marvellously unique and full of dry wit). It took me a while to warm up to the multiple points of view - thematically, it makes sense for a story about Distributed Intelligence to be distributed among multiple characters, yes, but it also distributes my depth of connection - but it was rewarding when all the disparate parts came together. I especially loved the Martian characters and the alternative worldview they offered.

A group of Martian bioforms respond to a distress signal from Earth. Instead of helping, everything immediately goes terribly wrong. I am so excited to have recieved this ARC. I'm a fan of Tchaikovsky's writing and absolutely devoured Dogs of War, the first book in this series.

The Good:
- Most of the characters are super interesting. There's no clichés here. My favourite is Irae, easily. But I also appreciated Cricket, Serval and Wells.
- I really like the fragmented way of reading the events unfolding from constantly changing perspectives. It's a unique way of storytelling.

The Could Be Better:
- There's a lot of exposition of the world and background events. Could've done with less, especially for a better balance in the book.
- Not necessarily negative or anything: but I really enjoyed how each character perspective in Dogs of War sounded so unique. Here some spoken text will have differences from character to character, but the thoughts are in the same style.

The Bad:
- Nothing really, I enjoyed myself!

In conclusion this was another fun foray into his writing. The balance/pace could've been better but overall the story gripped me. Thanks NetGalley and Head of Zeus for providing me with an eARC. All thoughts are my own.

ARC provided by NetGalley.

When getting this book to review, two parts of my life came to mind: buying second hand books from the store near my school, and my first experiences of volunteer work.

An odd way to start the review, fair, but they both heavily influenced how I felt about the book.

When I was younger, my main source of books was a second hand book store, leaving options limited and eclectic, and I would often pick up the second or third book in a series as my first foray in a setting. Bee Speaker being the 3rd in a series of books and my first Tchaikovsky book gave the read the feeling of there being a bigger world that I was not fully aware of, which was surprisingly refreshing. It made a story which has only three locations feel much wider and part of a real world. I also appreciated that despite that feeling of there being a larger world, everything was made clear quickly and succinctly, never leaving me feel lost in what was happening or who we were talking about.

The other part of my life which came to mind as I was reading was, as mentioned above, my first experiences of volunteer work. The story of Bee Speaker is as follows: a team of people from the human colony of Mars return to Earth to try and help after receiving a distress call, and in trying to help, make everything hit the fan at record speed. People setting out to change the world often go into it with visions of a changed world, only to be confronted with the realities of how hard the world is to change, and that seems to be a big part of the idea behind the story. Add in an interesting take on AI, genetically engineered dogs, reptiles and transhumanist Martians in a world destroyed by unbridled capitalism and post-ai dependence on unsustainable tech, and you've got a setting with some fun chaos to offer.

Tchaikovsky writes extremely well, with a voice which stands distinctly apart from other authors, and feels erudite, thoughtful and down to earth all at the same time, and allows for the book to almost feel like someone telling you an anecdote from their own lives. Throughout beekeeper there is a large cast of POVs, giving us an understanding of events from all sides of the discussion, often switching between characters who are antagonistic towards each other as they are interacting, and letting us get a full 360 shot of quite a few scenes.

A great time, a great and quick read, Tchaikovsky has jumped up higher on my TBR.

My review of this unusual book will be pretty much the same as with all the other books I have read by this talented author.
For a long time in this book, I do feel that, although incredibly well written, Mr Tchaikovsky would never dream of writing six words when twenty-four would say the same thing, albeit in a more clever way. Although this works well in literary fiction, I am never sure that it keeps the attention of science fiction addicts like me.
However, once past half way (and that is a lot of words already - these books are always very long), the book becomes absolutely compulsive reading. Even if you know that there is still the equivalent size of a normal book to go.
I do have a tendency to speed read, but despite my earlier comments, I find I cannot do this with these books as the sentences are so well crafted, they are a delight to read; yet it does make the earlier parts of the novel seem to work at a glacial pace. However I don't feel that in the later stages. Sometimes I did wish I could have just picked up this book, and the others, half way through!
I did enjoy the somewhat funny bits!
But the stories, the imagination, and the excellent ideas - spot on. This is why I continue to read books by this author, but do have to set aside a chunk of time to do so.

It's not that Adrian Tchaikovsky never does a series that's advertised as such, of course he does, but I do appreciate how often he'll put out what feels like, and works as, a perfectly satisfactory self-contained book, and then a few years later he clearly has an idea for what might happen after that, and so on. So Dogs Of War, about genetically manipulated animals being used in near-future human wars, was complete in itself, but still provided a world that could be picked up again a generation down the line in the Mars colonisation and culture wars of Bear Head. And again, that didn't leave things hanging in a bad way, but nor does it feel superfluous for Bee Speaker to check in again after another century or two.

At this point, the most obvious thing to mention about the timeline is that it's not going great. The first two books weren't exactly cheery; they were borderline cyberpunk, all unrestrained capitalism, the human love of hierarchy and excuses for cruelty, othering and persecution run rampant. But things can only go on like that for so long, and now those times are the Old, back before the General Collapse. And looking at the quotes I've put down from this, most of them are pithy summaries of the various interlocking disasters and humanity's head-in-sand refusal to do anything about them, but I'm not sure I actually need to include them here because you're all living through it, same as I am. As for what comes after, among the few survivors in a broken world, well, Tchaikovsky is hardly the first to suggest that the next dark age will have a lot in common with the last one, but the way so many tech bros openly see themselves as warlords, fantasise about the martial brotherhoods they'll assemble in their strongholds, gives it all a nasty extra resonance; the bunker having heralds with airhorns was a particularly deft horror.

And into this neo-barbaric landscape, with occasional monastic islands retaining faltering knowledge of what humanity was once able to achieve, plunges a well-meaning delegation from the Mars colony, which has in many respects ended up doing better than Earth since the collapse, simply because they're in such an inhospitable place that if people there hadn't got past our long-standing failure states, they'd all have died. So they genuninely do believe in co-operation, instead of just paying lip service to the notion, and they have brilliant technological fixes, and not just the usual political pretence of good intentions, but the real thing. None of which prevents their arrival from upending a delicate balance of power, setting various Earth factions at each other's throats, and generally making a massive mess of things.

Given this bleak opening position, the book does manage a surprising quantity of laughs, especially in the sections from the viewpoint of hapless monk Cricket and terrifying augmented reptile Irae. It also ends up getting across some wholesome messages without being inartistic about it, and sure, you could argue that there's nothing new about suggesting that an existence with no goal beyond surviving is not likely to be an existence that's worth very much; that really, it would be much better to keep Earth habitable than try to make a go of it on Mars; that concepts like pride and honour mainly seem to be good for getting people killed, usually not the right people, and maybe it would be good to move beyond that. But equally, it's not like any of that really seems to have sunk in terribly well so far, is it? Fairer, I think, to suggest that a lot of the material Tchaikovsky is working with here (distributed intelligences, capitalism's inability to correct its own death spiral, even the protagonist who'd rather not be involved in the whole terrifying situation) is familiar from many of his recent books. Also that, like almost any classic Doctor Who story longer than four episodes, Bee Speaker could have been shorter by at least one capture/escape/recapture cycle without losing much – and that it didn't need to give away its endgame on the cover. But if it's not one to rank with Tchaikovsky's best, nor does it disgrace the surprising degree of quality control he somehow maintains in tandem with his superhuman workrate.

(Netgalley ARC)