Review: Pretenders to the Throne of God by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I know that there are a bunch of Adrian Tchaikovsky fans among the LGM commentariat (and those of you who are not fans should try to become acquainted; whether your tastes run to science fiction or fantasy, there’s bound to be something in Tchaikovsky’s voluminous bibliography that will appeal to you). For the last few years, he has been (among other projects) furiously at work on what is to my mind not only his own best series, but one of the top examples of fantasy writing in the current decade. I am speaking, of course, of the Tyrant Philosophers series, which currently runs to four novels and a novella.

The tyrant philosophers of the title are the Palleseen, a fascistic, expansionist empire who seek to “perfect” the work by eliminating religion, superstition, and magic. The workings of fascistic systems have been a preoccupation of Tchaikovsky’s in most of his recent writing (for example, in the science fiction novels Alien Clay and Shroud), and in the Tyrant Philosopers books he achieves his most complete, most thoughtful handling of the subject. Over the course of the series—which begins by regarding the Palleseen from outside, through the eyes of the people they have colonized, and gradually progresses to the very heart of their war machine—he observes both how their system sustains itself (often by devouring the very powers it has decried as unclean) and how it undermines itself.

I reviewed the first Tyrant Philosophers novel, City of Last Chances, in 2023, and called it an unexpected return to the New Weird. Late last year I published an omnibus review of the next three books in the series—the novels House of Open Wounds and Days of Shattered Faith, and the novella Lives of Bitter Rain—after which Tchaikovsky contacted me and offered me an ARC of the next book, Pretenders to the Throne of God. My review of the book appeared in last month’s Locus, and is now online.

Though the Palleseen are unambiguously the villains of the series, Tchaikovsky’s focus is on how their empire functions, sustains itself, and – eventually – undermines itself. Throughout the previous books in the series, we have seen how the pressures of a costly war with the Loruthi empire have encouraged the uptake of ‘‘unorthodox’’ methods such as necromancy and demonology; how soldiers on the front lines, facing suddenly stiff odds, have taken up forgotten religions, spread­ing cults of belief through precisely the one army that was meant to be immune to them; and how officers posted further and further away from the heart of the empire are exposed to new ideas that worm their way beneath their training in the tenets of perfection.

Pretenders to the Throne of God, the most re­cent novel in the series, sees these pressures come to a head at a place of seemingly no importance. The city-state of Eres Ffenegh is a minor Palleseen holding, picked up as an afterthought as the Loruthi were in retreat. But now the city is in revolt, and its small, unprepared garrison has become a besieging force. Inside the city, remnants of the Palleseen cults, which in the aftermath of the war have been hunted nearly to extinction, have joined forces with the defenders. Survivors of past Palleseen con­quests, including characters familiar from previous novels, show up to offer aid. Suddenly, reclaiming Eres Ffenegh isn’t just an item on a to-do list, but a matter of national pride.

…

It is in the Palleseen camp, however, that the bulk of the novel’s action takes place, and where its key dilemma is established. The garrison besieging Eres Ffenegh is under strict orders to retake the city by any means necessary. But it is also in receipt of new directives issued in the hopes of sweeping under the rug all the unpleasant things the Pals did during and in the aftermath of the war. Certain methods – the very methods the garrison was depending on to retake the city – have been declared newly imperfect. Dantell, the weaselly, self-serving director of the magical division, is keenly aware of how easily she could end up on the wrong side of orthodoxy, and desperately casting about for scapegoats to sacrifice in her stead. These end up being the Heretics, a group of ‘‘Specialist’’ officers who, even as they feel the winds growing chill, keep insisting that their loyalty and usefulness will keep them safe.

Despite the throughline of their shared villains, the Tyrant Philosophers novels are by and large standalones, each set in a different location and with (mostly) different characters. You can start with almost any one of them, though Pretenders to the Throne of God is perhaps less comprehensible to new readers than its predecessors. Wherever you start, I highly recommend this series to anyone looking for rich, imaginative, politically engaged fantasy.