Eyes of the Void

Review originally posted on Geeky Galaxy.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

When I was writing up the 2022 Sci-Fi Book Releases Masterlist, I stumbled across Eyes of the Void on Netgalley and immediately hit “Request” despite saying to myself I wasn't requesting anymore books until I'd gone through the awkwardly long list of books I hadn't yet reviewed. When Pan Mac accepted the request, I dropped everything else and started reading because I loved Shards of Earth and couldn't wait to see what awaited our rag-tag bunch in the next book.

Eyes of the Void is told in multiple POVs from pretty much every important character. Each member of the Vulture God crew plus some others, such as a human spy. Every character held their own for their own chapters with strong voice and exciting information to add to the overall story; none of the chapters felt unnecessary or superfluous.

The Final Architecture has become one of those series for me where I want to absorb as much information about the world as possible, so whilst this story felt slightly different to Shards of Earth as there was more room for exploring the wider universe and introducing more of the world, I was totally here for it. One additional aspect is the Naeromathi (hopefully I copied that down correctly!) a fascinating species that seems to have dealt with the Architects before. In classic Tchaikovsky style, they're about as alien as you could get. You could never accuse Tchaikovsky of creating aliens that are just humans with some added scales or limbs. They're always so much more than that. Much stranger. Much more interesting. Much more alien.

The Naeromathi are just one of the additional plot threads introduced in Eyes of the Void. There's also plenty of political in-fighting in the Hugh, warmongering between everyone and everyone else (like the Parthenon and Hugh or the Hegemony and possibly everyone else). The tension of the political world of The Final Architecture rests on a knife-edge throughout Eyes of the Void and I enjoyed every word of it.

And with everything else going on, don't forget the Architects are out to reform planets with billions of people living there. No big deal. Eyes of the Void has a lot going on, I won't lie. It's the sort of book you want to sit and enjoy in peace and quiet to ensure you can catch everything that's going on and keep up with everything in the moment.

You definitely want to be focusing on the fight scenes too. Whether it's battles between a Partheni who takes no bullshit versus a bunch of xenophobes or a solar-system wide battle of everyone vs Architects, it is sure to not let you down. Tchaikovsky balances the quick pace of a hard-won battle against awesome descriptions of someone's shoulder having a hole punched through it by a particularly nasty weapon well. Speaking of holes in shoulders... I wouldn't recommend this if you're squeamish at all. Whether it's humans, human-adjacent or strange-as-aliens, everyone bleeds, everyone dies... everyone can get torn into four pieces. Don't say you weren't warned!

Finally, I'm going to mention the crew of the Vulture God; Idris, Solace, Olli, Kris, Kittering. Sometimes, The Final Architecture feels like the story of Idris. He's so important to everything that's going on, and frankly, the crew do spend more time either protecting or rescuing him than pretty much everything else. But each character holds their own and has a place and a story of their own to tell. I sat for a while trying to decide who my favourite character is, and honestly, I couldn't pick one. I love Solace, the badass Partheni who won't back down from a fight. Kris, the lawyer, with a violent history who isn't afraid to talk down a fight but also whip out her blade at a moment's notice. Maybe Olli, the tech specialist who walks around in a damn metal scorpion and has one hell of a mouth on her. Kittering, the hiver who, most of the time, probably just wants some peace and quiet, but has plenty of intelligence buried beneath the fear. Honestly, that whole crew are epic.

I could keep going, but this is already approaching too many words!

The Final Architecture is space opera on a truly epic scale. Eyes of the Void, the second book in the series takes up where the first book left off with Idris, the Int who forms the heart of the tale, now trying to help find people in the Partheni, rivals to his native Hugh, who can potentially become Ints as well. His fellow crew members on the Vulture God are helping out with Partheni intelligence to earn their keep. Things quickly devolve from there as we learn more about the Hegemony, Unspace, the Architects and the various factions all stand on (or just over) the brink of war.

What Tchaikovsky does so well is balancing these different factions, playing them off against each other (and internally) giving a dense political tapestry to the tale, whilst allowing the universe ending action to play out as a backdrop to it all. I think the tendency to focus on the small problems when major disasters are going on around you is a definitely a very human reaction, and something that the human factions noticeably do in this story, allowing the alien factions to be a bit more distinctive yet leaving us a familiar backdrop.

I thoroughly enjoyed this, the balance between intimate and epic is excellently maintained. The found family of the crew of the Vulture God is well balanced with an excellent level of camaraderie and banter that gives the whole thing a sense of life. Each faction has its own distinct character, and each species also is distinctive. The aliens do feel genuinely alien, from the mysterious Architects to the weirdness of the Essiel Hegemony. The universe feels real, lived in and just excellently built.

Thoroughly looking forward to diving into the final book in the series!

Worth my time

I don't write reviews; however, I want to write a few words this once. The Final Architecture series really interests me. It's solid sci-fi, placing a few expected tropes (the surly crew member, the duty bound soldier, the angst-ridden hero) within a complex and unusual universe. I eagerly await the next installment!

This book should have come with a warning: “Tchaikovsky is highly addictive and may be damaging to your sleep patterns!” Book 1 had left me highly attached the the characters, book 2 then threw these characters into peril - peril written to challenge each character in ways specific to their them...and I loved it.

The downside of the book was twofold - I did not want to put it down - it was one of those books where I was tired, it was late, I was literally struggling to keep my eyes open, but I had to read just one more page to see the character safe or to find out the next revelation...just one more page! Which leads to the other downside. Eventually there were no more pages! I can't criticise Mr Tchaikovsky, he resolved the immediate plot and left it in a satisfying and interesting place, while leaving big questions to be resolved in book 3. This is always a balance - if an author gets it wrong the reader can feel cheated, or just not interested in the next book. Here Mr Tchaikovsky gets it spot on....and yet....

OMG I want to know what happens next!