It‘s not incredibly surprising that Elder Race left me wanting. The whole premise isn‘t my cup of tea:
Lynesse is the lowly Fourth Daughter of the queen, and always getting in the way.
But a demon is terrorizing the land, and now she’s an adult (albeit barely) and although she still gets in the way, she understands that the only way to save her people is to invoke the pact between her family and the Elder sorcerer who has inhabited the local tower for as long as her people have lived here (though none in living memory has approached it).
But Elder Nyr isn’t a sorcerer, and he is forbidden to help, for his knowledge of science tells him the threat cannot possibly be a demon…
Adrian Tchaikovsky has a history of surprising me with his books and I was ready to be proven wrong.
Unfortunately I wasn‘t. The story is exactly what I expected it to be, there was no interesting twist, not even interesting characters. Everybody was sulky or even clinically depressed. Topics that are worth writing about but felt very out of place in this instance.
It wasn‘t awful. It wasn‘t great. It‘s an unsurprising book that‘s nicely written.
By the way: If you want to read something about a scientist that was stationed at a planet to oversee the evolution of its inhabitants, I strongly recommend Children Of Time from no other than… Adrian Tchaikovsky.