Lords of Uncreation

Adrian Tchaikovsky Lords of Uncreation The Final Architects - Book #3 ISBN: 9781529052015, 9780316705929 Kindle / ASIN: B0BD4YJVNG Genre: Science Fiction Goodreads Rating: 0.00 Paperback, 624 pages Published: 2023 The Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author of 'Children of Time' brings us the third and final novel in an extraordinary space opera trilogy about humanity on the brink of extinction, and how one man's discovery will save or destroy us all. 2023 - ePub verification and revisions by zardox ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY LORDS OF UNCREATION The Final Architecture Book Three First published 2023 by Tor This electronic edition first published 2023 by Tor an imprint of Pan Macmillan The Smithson, 6 Briset Street, London EC1M 5NR EU representative: Macmillan Publishers Ireland Ltd, 1st Floor, The Liffey Trust Centre, 117–126 Sheriff Street Upper, Dublin 1, D01 YC43 Associated companies throughout the world www.panmacmillan.com ISBN 978-1-5290-5201-5 Copyright © Adrian Czajkowski 2023 Cover design by Steve Stone Author photo © Joby Sessions The right of Adrian Czajkowski to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases. To John Catling CONTENTS The Story So Far Part One: Estoc Part Two: Estoc Part Three: Crux Part Four: Beyond Acknowledgements The Universe of Shards: Reference Glossary Characters Worlds Species Ships Timeline About the Author THE STORY SO FAR Key concepts Unspace: the underlying nothing beneath the universe. Gravitic drives allow ships to enter and travel through unspace, crossing light years of real space in moments. Most journeys are taken along Throughway routes between stars. The Architects: moon-sized entities that come from unspace to rework inhabited planets into bizarre sculptures. One of their number visited Earth, which began seventy years of fight and flight, a war costing billions of lives. Only contact between the engineered human Intermediaries and the Architects ended the conflict. Now, fifty years later, the Architects have returned. Originators: on some planets, the ruins of an elder civilization of Originators can be found, still entirely mysterious. Previously Architects appeared to avoid any trace of this ancient culture. More recently they have taken to painstakingly removing such traces from ships and planets they plan to rework. The Hegemony: an alien empire controlled by the inscrutable Essiel, who have sole access to the technology that allows Originator artefacts to be moved. They promise their subjects eternal protection from the Architects. However, the newly returned Architects no longer seem to be as in awe of the artefacts as they once were. Humanity’s factions Following the explosive expansion of refugee humanity in the ‘Polyaspora’, humanity now exists across numerous colonies, from the comfortable settled worlds to the vast numbers of spacers who still live precarious lives between planets. Trade and travel within the Colonial Sphere is greatly helped by the Intermediaries, who are among the few able to navigate unspace without using the Throughways. The Colonies are governed by the Council of Human Interests, familiarly known as Hugh, from the world of Berlenhof. Humanity stood alongside many others during the first war against the Architects, but its closest allies came from within. These included the Hivers, who are a composite cyborg intelligence, built as tools but now independent. Dr Parsefer’s Parthenon, an artificially created society of women, also formed the front line in the war. Following the secession of both Hivers and Parthenon, hostile Colonial factions have arisen, including the humanity-first Nativists and the Betrayed, who believe in a conspiracy that has denied humans their pre-eminence in the universe. Various groups within Hugh encourage and draw support from these growing factions, including the dictatorial noble houses of the Magda, one of the Colonies’ most influential worlds. Key characters The Vulture God: a salvage ship. Its crew includes drone specialist Olli, lawyer and duellist Kris, trade factor Kittering and Idris Telemmier. Idris is one of the last of the original Intermediaries, who wanted nothing more than to live out his days in peace until an old friend from the war, the Partheni Solace, came looking to recruit him for her government. Havaer Mundy: an agent of Hugh who has variously pursued and associated with the crew of the Vulture God as they became entwined with the return of the Architects. Delegate Trine: a Hiver archaeologist, an old friend of Idris and Solace from the war and an authority on what little is known about the Originators. Ravin and Piter Uskaro: Magdan nobles linked to Hugh’s more xenophobic elements, part of a powerful clique seeking to preserve a hand-picked selection of humanity on ark ships. The Unspeakable Aklu, the Razor and the Hook: an Essiel gangster from the Hegemony, by turns an enemy and a dubious ally of the Vulture God crew. Seems to feel a kinship with Olli, as someone who has not given in to their physical limitations. The research team at the Eye, a rogue scientific venture, led by Ahab, an obsessive Naeromathi. Other members include the human Doctor Shinandri and the cyborg engineer Tokamak Jaine. They work alongside the Harbinger Ash, the alien that originally warned Earth about the Architects over a century ago. Recent events The return of the Architects has blazed a trail of reworked planets across human space. And beyond. Even the Hegemony has not proven immune to