What're ya readin'?

I've just finished Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

It's about a princess trying to prove her worth by recruiting a wizard to help defeat a demon.

Except the world they're on is a human terraforming colony, now post- (or pre-?) technological, thousands of years in the future. The "wizard" is an anthropologist from a later, more advanced period of Earth history than the original colonists, who spends most of his millennia in stasis while waiting for communications from Earth.

The chapters alternate between third-person fantasy from the princess' perspective, all flowery formal language, and a much more conversational first-person sci-fi for the "sorcerer". Language differences mean that the sorcerer can't explain that he's just a scientist and that his "familiar" is a robot, so he's mostly pretty grumpy about being dragged on a quest by an old friend's great-great granddaughter.

That sounds fantastic!

I bought Elder Race on aniki's recommendation (and because it was cheap on Kindle), and it is very good, but also surprisingly short.

Spoiler - click to showFinding the arch felt more like the end of act 1, and should have led to a withdrawal - and a much more severe reassessment of priorities from Nyr, DCS or no. The thief guy gets nothing to do except walk for a bit, and didn't really need to be there at all, beyond giving them directions at the speaking circle thing.

I like the concept and the plot, and it's well-written, but it could have done with being at least twice as long.