One other month, one other Adrian Tchaikovsky e-book…
We have now talked about it earlier than, however you might have observed fairly a couple of books from Adrian on the bookshop cabinets these days. He’s at all times had a gradual launch schedule, however I make it that there’s a minimum of 5 in 2025 alone. (I’ve reviewed Shroud, Spiderlight, and Alien Clay all within the final yr or so.)
As we attain the tip of 2025, right here’s one other dinky launch so as to add to the pile – a 200-ish web page novella and quick story in hardback that evokes nursery tales, little individuals and all these Pinocchio-like puppetry issues.
A trickster thief, pressured to tackle a heist job by a neighborhood gangster is just not a very authentic plot, admittedly – even when it includes magic and homunculi (that’s residing puppets, to the uninitiated.)
However that is Adrian Tchaikovsky we’re – an writer who has been recognized to take simply identifiable tropes and make them into one thing extra authentic.
And so it’s right here. The story focusses upon Coppelia (a pleasant nod to E T A Hoffman’s story The Sandman maybe) who lives in Fountains Parish. That is an space that’s a part of the Barrions, an space run by gang-lords who reap the benefits of the individuals there to steal from the wealthy half-mages who dwell within the magical metropolis of Loretz.
Coppelia is given a proposal she will be able to’t refuse by her mentor, Auntie Numerous, who desires her to make use of her particular expertise to gather a doubtlessly useful magic artifact that appears lengthy forgotten within the cellar of a citadel. That is one thing that native gang chief Gaston Ferrulio calls for, considering that he may use the artifact for his personal good.
In true heist-style, a gang is acquired collectively to do the deed, as they are saying. Together with Coppelia are two miniature homunculi – a wood feminine named Tef and a metal-made warrior named Arc. In fact, it goes improper, and the implications of this make up the remainder of the novella.
Though the e-book is novella-sized, as is common Adrian manages to squeeze in a couple of good little particulars because the plot evolves of Coppelia’s world and the individuals round her.
I imagined it to be very a lot akin to Guillermo del Toro’s movie Pinocchio (2022) when it comes to type and setting, all wooden, gears and gasoline lamps (even when one of many homunculi has a contact of the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz.) The prose is so good that I stored feeling that the e-book written by another person would have been greater, due to all the weather that Adrian briefly mentions alongside the best way.
Characterisation is a selected energy of Adrian’s, I believe; and so I used to be happy to search out that, regardless of the brevity of the novella, it was as much as customary, with characters whose depth belie the brevity of the e-book. Coppelia (a figuring out nod to E T A Hoffman’s The Sandman there) for instance is as you’d anticipate – feisty, sparky, good in a struggle, quick-witted, somebody who is aware of when to make a stand and when to run, a witty riposte by no means distant from her mouth.
The homunculi, primarily represented by the wood Tef and the steel Arc, have a bantering type reminiscent to me of Mary Norton’s The Debtors, Terry Pratchett’s Wee Free Males, or even perhaps the dwarfs in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits. They’re, regardless of their miniature dimension, remarkably grownup of their tone and method, as they need to be having existed for an extended whereas earlier than coming to the magical metropolis of Loretz.
With all of this mechanical wizardry, magic potions and inanimate objects delivered to life, you may even be considering ‘Pantomime!’, particularly at the moment of yr (the Nutcracker Suite, and so on.) However actually, there’s nothing Pantomime-ish about this story. While some evaluations check with the e-book as whimsical, I believe that it’s fairly a darkish story, extra of a steampunk fantasy with a barely magical contact. It’s positively much less cosy than say Travis Baldree’s current Legends & Lattes collection, though it lures the reader in by utilizing comparable tropes. (It may also be price mentioning that Adrian’s story was first printed three years earlier than Traviss’s books.)
Nevertheless it’s fast-paced and even enjoyable at instances, with various humour as we go alongside. Most of all of the story has one thing to say of friendship and loyalty, even when different ethics are… properly, much less necessary.
The addition of the quick story Valuable Little Issues (additionally printed initially in 2019) makes a pleasant little counterpoint, as a prequel set in the identical world that explains the origins of the group of homunculi that Arc and Tef are a part of. It’s not important but it surely builds on a few of the concepts talked about within the novella.
In abstract, Made Issues exhibits us once more that Adrian writes fantasy in addition to he does science fiction. It’s a great story that, as Adrian usually does, performs with fantasy tropes that make you assume, however doesn’t outstay its welcome.
While it’s darker and extra visceral moments might make you wince, ultimately its appeal might offer you a heat fuzzy glow, which is all of the extra welcome in Winter (which it’s right here, as I sort this.) It will be a pleasant introduction to somebody desirous to strive Adrian’s fantasy work however not fairly positive the place to begin, to not point out, in fact, that it could make a pleasant little Christmas stocking-filler! (Dare I say it? “It’s a cracker!!” *grin* )
© 2025 Mark Yon
Hardback | Tor / PanMacmillan
MADE THINGS by Adrian Tchaikovsky
December 2025 | 212 pages
Made Issues and Valuable Little Issues had been first printed in 2019 by Tor.
ISBN: 978-1035071692
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