2021/156: Elder Race -- Adrian Tchaikovsky

2021/156: Elder Race -- Adrian Tchaikovsky

I am only now ... beginning to realise just how broken my own superior culture actually was. They set us here to make exhaustive anthropological notes on the fall of every sparrow. But not to catch a single one of them. To know, but very emphatically not to care. [p. 148]

Lynesse Fourth Daughter, accompanied by her laconic companion Esha Free Mark, is on a quest: a demon is threatening the land, and she seeks the help of the fabled sorcerer, Nyrgoth Elder, who aided her family centuries ago against the evil Ulmoth. The sorcerer, when they find him in his forbidding tower, is seven feet tall, horned, and wears 'slate robes that glittered with golden sigils'.

Nyr Illim Tevitch, anthropologist second class of Earth's Explorer Corps, is woken from his long, artificial sleep by the outpost's caretaker routines.( Read more... )

2021: Year in Review (books)

See them all on LibraryThing or on Goodreads
* 159 books, all but 2 of them on Kindle (Goodreads shows 169 but this includes rereads that I did not re-review or tag)
* 123 by female writers, 34 by male writers, not all books tagged
* 17 rereads

My categorisations (some books will have more than one of these tags: my tagging is not consistent and I'm not 100% confident of search results):
* 75 fantasy, 20 SF, 38 historical (predominantly 19th / 20th century, 10 books set in WW1 or WW2)
* 27 romance (majority non-het romance)
* 13 YA/children's
* 16 non-fiction

Best five:
* The Doors of Eden - Adrian Tchaikovsky
* The Last House on Needless Street - Catriona Ward
* Perhaps the Stars - Ada Palmer
* Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo
* In Other Lands - Sarah Rees Brennan

Last year's 'books read' post