90 Quotes by Adrian Tchaikovsky

We tried a spontaneous exercise in the old democracy, and Tarent carried it by superior force of personality rather than reasoning or merit. This is exactly why democracy could never work as a governmental system.

Back in Seven Trees, the remaining local males are hard at work. Some have fled, but most of the evacuees are female. Males are replaceable, always underfoot, always too numerous. Many have been instructed to remain in the city until the last, on pain of death.

Complex life was merely the recent froth over a great vat of prokaryotes feeding and dividing and dying.

I was also unsure that once a man has raised the mob (for there is really only one mob, waiting in potentia to be raised) whether anyone can keep it from the barbaric acts of violence it strains for.

We do not respect our enemies; we despair of them. Your struggle, your fierce will to prevail in spite of all, we do not admire this. We see only a terrible, senseless waste of life – both ours and yours. We see murdered potential, young men and women who might have become anything becoming only corpses through one woman’s dreams of conquering a city she has not even seen.

There had been those back on Earth who claimed the universe cared, and that the survival of humanity was important, destined, meant . They had mostly stayed behind, holding to their corroding faith that some great power would weigh in on their behalf if only things became so very bad. Perhaps it had: those on the ark ship could never know for sure. Holsten had his own beliefs, though, and they did not encompass salvation by any means other than the hand of mankind itself.

The Mirror Empire is the most original fantasy I've read in a long time, set in a world full of new ideas, expanding the horizons of the genre. A complex and intricate book full of elegant ideas and finely-drawn characters.

The sun filtered down through the waters like an embarrassment of sapphires.

Doctor Avrana Kern awoke to a dozen complex feeds of information, none of which helped her restore her memories of what had just happened or why she was groggily returning to consciousness in a cold-sleep unit. She could not open her eyes; her entire body was cramping and there was nothing in her mental space except the overkill of information assailing her, every system of the Sentry Pod clamouring to report.