Liviu's Reviews > Empire in Black and Gold

Excellent debut fantasy set in a quite unusual world of various human races that have some specific insect adaptation and are called insect-kinden, e.g. beetle-kinden squat, mechanically inclined, mantis-kinden fast deadly warriors, spider-kinden masters of intrigue in whose society women dominate, moth-kindeb mystical former rulers until the mechanically inclined kinden, beetle, ants and flies overthrew them and built an early industrial society of city states - Lowlands - loosely allied and having the Collegium - an Athens like mercantile and scholar democracy as the most influential.

But now the tribes of the eastern deserts have been united by the wasp-kinden in the Empire in Black and Gold of the title and in the 3 generations since creation the Empire started expanding to the borders of the Lowlands where the industrial powerhouse city of Helleron is making tons of money selling the most advanced weapons and machinery to it. Making money for now...

One master artificer and historian beetle-kinden Stenwold Maker of the Collegium has seen the Empire in action at first hand when fighting alongside a desert city state trying to resist the wasp-kinden and in the 17 years since he played Casandra to the Collegium assembly with the same (lack of) success as the original had with the nobles of Troy. But now after winning a terrible war with the dragonfly-kinden Commonweal, the Empire is on the move again.

Stenwold and his last disciples, his spider-kinden ward Tynisa, his niece Chee, his apprentice Totho and a young prince of the Commonweal Salma try one more desperate attempt to do something, while Intelligence Captain Thalric of the Empire currently emissary to the Collegium has Sten on his hit list.

Full of wonders, action and stopping at a reasonable point this novel is an extraordinary debut and moved into my top 5 fantasies of 2008. The second book scheduled for February 09 became a get asap book