This is a dream come true for me as I read these books almost decade ago and it deserves a much wider audience and fanbase.

Why, then, would you rely primarily on swords and other sharp edges, and engage in primarily hand-to-hand combat rather than the more distant wars more common to 20th century Earth? Of course, all types of people show up in every land, but how they deal with the types allows for a lot of diverse conflict situations.

Though at first the concept of insect-kinden threw me off a bit, the idea has grown on me the further I get into this series. I’ve already talked about how odd the absence of a wheel is in this culture; this becomes even more confusing with early talk of a railroad connecting two large cities — an engine that runs on a track can only have wheels and not legs, true?

Author James Lovegrove described it as "superior stuff, tackling big themes – gods, messiahs, artificial intelligence, alienness – with brio". After drawing you in it skips ahead a few years and introduces the main cast of somewhat unlikely protagonists and the journey begins. And that is easy to overlook based one how excellent every single character is no matter which side of the conflict they are on or how little or big their part is. Here the humans are separated in different kinden which all have special qualities connected with certain arthropod species that lent their names to the respective kinden. not that torture doesn't happen in this book, but I appreciated the way it was handled, and even more, I found the chief villain, Captain Thalric, interesting in his determined dedication to the empire.Seventeen years ago Stenwold witnessed the Wasp Empire storming the city of Myna in a brutal war of conquest. It falls upon his shoulders to open the eyes of his people – as soon a black-and-gold tide will sweep down over the Lowlands and burn away everything in its path. Totho is rescued by Scuto, a Thorn-bug kinden and Stenwold's head agent in Helleron who controls his own espionage operation within the city. That question remains to be answered, but as of now Tchaikovsky’s debut has received little fanfare despite being one of the best first novels that I’ve read all year. If you have read any of Adrian Tchaikovsky other novels, you already know how much of a wizard his with words.