Review.

Eyes of the Void

Adrian Tchaikovsky

Book 2 of The Final Architecture
Pub date: 03 May 2022
Publisher: Orbit
Reviewed from Net Galley

What makes an adventure story a great adventure story? Take interesting characters, throw them in precarious positions and situations and then see how they get out of them. Rinse, repeat. It’s an age-old formula and Adrian Tchaikovsky does it well in Eyes of the Void — Book 2 of The Final Architecture series. Eyes of the Void continues the action-packed adventure tradition he started in Book 1: Shards of Earth, embroiling his characters in new conflicts with old nemesis’s and building out the mysteries of his universe.

An addendum to my adventure story maxim is that a great SF adventure story also has creative, believable and intriguing world-building and here again Tchaikovsky exceeds expectations. And since the nature of his universe is one of the central mysteries of the series, Tchaikovsky is consciously and incrementally building it out in a way that keeps the reader curious and anticipating even more.

But while I love the universe he has built, I love the characters even more. This is the quintessential rag-tag group of unlikely heroes — I really get the sense they wouldn’t be able to make it as individuals and have, for me, the perfect family as crew of the The Vulture God.

All that said, I do think book two suffers a bit — just a the tiniest bit — from a second-book-syndrome. Most of the character development and relationship conflict is dealt with in the first book and the second dwells more on the rapid-fire adventures (almost too much so) and on advancing the overall “problem” plot trajectory. And since I loved the characters so much I find that a little bit of a letdown.

But there is always the next book to look forward to. And I do…