Blood of the Mantis by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I've been a big fan of Tchaikovsky ever since I read Children of Time, and have since raved over all his SF since then.

On the other hand, when it comes to his original older fantasy, and specifically the Shadows of the Apt epic fantasy, I've had a hard time getting into them.

Almost everything about his writing is superior in his SF. I believe this. Characters, descriptions, plots, everything. He still has his focus on insects and animals, (almost a trademark,) but the early fiction is pretty much a standard almost Hickman/Weiss clone with races that say that they're spider-kin or ant-kin, etc, with hardly any evidence of it. I probably would have fallen right into it a lot more had the descriptions been lush and full of real consequence.

As it is, it just didn't grab my attention. This is my third try in the series.

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