My experience with Adrienne Tchaikovsky's books is mixed. I loved his standalone 'Dogs Of War' novel about genetically enhanced animals being used as soldiers but I couldn't get into his very popular 'Children Of Time' series.

I decided to try 'Firewalkers' because I wanted to see how Tchaikovsky handled the novella ( the book is 165 pages) and because it spoke to a topical theme: the very wealthy insulating themselves from the consequences of the environmental collapse that they have become wealthy by accelerating. I'm certain that the people funding Climate Change Denial see climate change as an opportunity to winnow the world's population while strengthening their own wealth and privilege.

I admired how much Adrian Tchaikovsky packed into this novella without ever making me feel that he was taking short-cuts or force-feeding me info dumps. He skilfully unpacks an Earth that is burning at the equator and drowning everywhere else; an Earth that has spent three generations of the poor and the desperate working to enable the mega-rich to flee the planet in huge luxury spaceships; an Earth where young Firewalkers head out into the killing heat to service the solar panels that keep the rich in air-conditioned luxury as they wait to take the space elevator up to their heaven in the sky.

The world-building is very well done. Everything feels real and depressingly plausible. It's not a future I'd want to be part of but I can see it coming. William Gibson is reputed to have said, 'The future is already here, it's just not very evenly distributed.' Tchaikovsky's future is definitely already here. It's in the burning of the rainforest in Brazil and the mining of diamonds in Africa and the refugees fleeing across the world. What Tchaikovsky does is make those things the 'new normal' of the future and imagine the attitudes and behaviours of the people born into it who know they can't fix the planet and they can't leave it either.

The FIrewalkers' trip out into the dead desert is a great piece of road-trip writing. It's high on tension and has great visuals. It's full of dangerous things that are never quite what they appear to be and which hint at either total disaster or a possible way out.

I liked the fact that Tchaikovsky didn't sugar-coat the Firewalkers' choices wrap them in some kind of heroic nobility. He shows how little chance they have of surviving and how much they're willing to do to keep breathing.

The ending was grimly satisfying. It also left a lot of tantalising possibilities about what might happen next.

The only weakness in the novella was that one of the main characters, a woman Firewalker with a passion for fixing things who is important to the plot, was very lightly drawn. Still, that's the kind of trade-off you may have to make to fit all of this into a novella.

I recommend listening to the audiobook version which is wonderfully performed by Adjoa Andoh.

The Punic Wars are a favorite of military history buffs. Rome's three wars with Carthage were the beginnings of its empire extending beyond Italy, also Carthage was the only opponent Rome ever faced that was at the time its military and economic equal. Most of the Punic Wars fascination centers on the Carthaginian commander Hannibal, who is usually ranked as one of the greatest military geniuses of all time. In particular, the Battle of Cannae is singled out as the definitive example of a brilliant commander making perfect use of the terrain and all his resources to defeat a much larger opposing army.

Goldsworthy's book is very much a military history. He does touch on the causes of the wars, but I would have appreciated a little more detail in that area, and some more exploration of the cultural and religious differences between Carthage and Rome. Goldsworthy focuses on the commanders and the battles, on Carthage's reliance on mercenaries while Rome's army consisted primarily of citizen soldiers. He relates how Carthage's navy initially dominated the Mediterranean, and how Rome quickly built a navy from scratch that ultimately defeated Carthage's more experienced sailors. I now know more about the differences between triremes and quinqueremes than I ever expected to.

Military historians, while popular with lay readers of history, are a minority among professional historians. Academic historians tend to focus on the vast socioeconomic forces that cause wars and ultimately determine the winners and losers. While I tend to agree with the socioeconomic interpretations, there are times when history turned on the unpredictable actions of individuals. Interestingly the Punic Wars can be used to support both arguments. While Rome never found a commander to rival Hannibal, the relentless Roman war machine ultimately destroyed Carthage. In the end consistent competence defeated unpredictable genius.

It was so good to get back to the Breed and to Rafe, who felt like he had a lot to make up for since the last time we saw him when he fell for the Opus operative. Devony also has an agenda and it doesn’t include this Breed male coming and interfering with her plans to get at Opus Nostrum for what they did to her family. The story was fast paced and passionate. The conflict was great and had several surprises that kept it interesting and not predictable. When she learns the truth, Rafe has a lot to make up for and that made for some really good reading. From start to finish it was an awesome read, I loved every second of it.

by Adrian Tchaikovski

This is written in a present tense monologue, detailing the experiences of a man lost in a place on Mars he calls The Crypts. His goal is to survive and hopefully to find other humans.

I have to admit that the writing style didn't engage me. There were humorous moments and one liners, but it wasn't enough to make me want to follow the main character through endless tunnels with nothing really happening much of the time.

Other reviewers seem to love it, so I'm glad it's not the first thing I've read by this author.

This was a short novella about an astronaut wandering some weird alien structure in space. The alien structure is a doorway to a complex of twisting corridors that sometimes lead to other doors at other stars. Basically, it’s Fae roads in space, complete with monsters that want to eat you and other travellers.

I thought the creepy atmosphere was well done, and although the “twist” is telegraphed well in advance, I still enjoyed the book and found it ended better than I was expecting there for a bit.

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