But when a strange affliction somewhere between demon and disease begins plaguing Lynesse’s people, she comes knocking at the so-called sorcerer’s door to wake him up and claim a favor from him as her birthright. Nyr, meanwhile, is one such sorcerer - actually an anthropologist from a starfaring civilization who is separated from his team by decades and light-years, and is keeping himself isolated in suspended animation from the bronze-age locals until rescue arrives. Lynesse is the worthless youngest daughter of a queen - an impulsive, too-earnest embarrassment to her family, believing as she does in the legends of sorcerers in their lineage.

Here, then, are books full of dueling paradigms, uncertain and chancy remembrance - with the past looming both as a resource and as a nightmare, and the future at its mercy.Īdrian Tchaikovsky is the author of over 20 novels, but somehow ELDER RACE (Tordotcom, 201 pp., paper, $14.99) is the first of his I’ve read.

But when disaster is near-universal and the gulf of disagreement vast, it’s easy to question our own recollections as suspect. We know we all remember things a little differently, with reality fracturing into competing narratives the further we get from any given occurrence. Most people I know have complained about memory problems, provoked by difficult times and traumatic events, and compounded by the redactions and distortions of social media. The year’s nearly over, and it’s hard to remember where it went.

Tade thompson books