The Chit Chat: Hey, y’all! Welcome back to the Raccoon Awards, a blog where I cup my hands in front of my mouth and yell about books I think are really cool. Today we’re talking about Adrian Tchaikovsky’s January release. It’s a sequel, so don’t yell at me if anything in here spoils book one for you, but that said, let’s get going.
The Synopsis: It’s been 10 years since the events in THE EXPERT SYSTEM’S BROTHER. Handry’s living his chill life being a boogeyman for regular people, until he gets word that there’s going to be a war between humans and some aggressive animals, and as the resident boogeyman leader, it’s his job to also be the militia, basically. Also there’s a character being eaten by wasps that wants to kill him. So they all go trekking out to the war and long story short, the aggressive animals might be aggressive for a reason, there’s some really creepy snail things trying to eat everyone For Science, and there’s another set of humans that are doing some rul high-key sketchy shit.
That’s all I can say without giving too much away, but what y’all need to know is shit met fan. I repeat: Shit. Met. Fan.
The Hot Takes: The first thing you need to know is that CHAMPION is basically nothing at all like BROTHER. I did a full review of book one if you’re interested, btw (click here) but to tl;dr it, book one is this epic novella about belonging, how humanity could create a utopia, and how the Mark of Cain can be both a blessing and a curse. There’s also a wild ass cult, a lot of familial camaraderie, starvation, etc. Great book, highly recommend.
CHAMPION is much more of a humans vs environment book. The backstory of BROTHER is still there – the world is still poison, the Order of Cain is still a thing, etc – but it’s backseat. CHAMPION hones in on colonization attitudes, failed experiments, and just how far humanity would go in its desperation to survive. The ending is a lot more open-ended, as well.
What really got me hooked while reading CHAMPION was how it gets hauntingly weirder the farther in you read. Obviously it’s got some speculative fiction aspects to it – you’d be hard pressed to find a TorDotCom title that doesn’t veer into speculative at some point in the narrative – but while BROTHER reins the weirdness in, CHAMPION lets it run wild. This is the sort of book where once the bass drops you’re on the edge of the seat like “what is GOING ON– did I READ THAT RIGHT?!” and finding someone to text out of context spoilers to because you need moral support (specific shoutout to my friend Faith at the FaithfullyGeeky booktube for putting up with my messages).
The Misc: I ended up really enjoying this book, but I do want to mention that I very nearly DNF’ed around 80 pages in. If this novella was any longer (my ARC is 188 pages) I probably would have, but like I said, once that bass drops, shit gets crazy and it’s a fantastically chaotic time. I pressed on hoping it would redeem itself and boy howdy, did it.
Also as a content warning: if you don’t like animal cruelty in books, even if they’re weird alien animals that might, I dunno, eat people For Science, this may not be the book for you. Some characters may or may not shoot some animals, some animals might die or something… just throwing that out there.
CHAMPION also does not seem to add any deeper meaning to BROTHER so much as it takes place in the same world with a completely separate narrative. I wouldn’t recommend reading book two without book one, but if you’re reading this review and going “book two does not sound like my cup of tea…” (because it’s definitely a niche scifi and that’s OK) I want to say you can 1,000% enjoy book one and leave book two for those who will enjoy it.
Does it get a star? Y’all should know by now there is nothing I love like a book that makes me go “what the absolute f*ck did I read?” and THE EXPERT SYSTEM’S CHAMPION checks that box off with a glitter gel pen. Consider this a starred review.
Can I buy it? THE EXPERT SYSTEM’S CHAMPION is available for PREORDER now, and hits shelves in January 2021. Friendly reminder that I am one of the booksellers at Copperfish Books, so while you can obviously get this book from wherever your heart desires, I would love to explain to my bosses why a bunch of people are pre-ordering from us. Click here if you’d like to kick off that conversation lol.
Award Winning Books 