Empire in Black and Gold

"Empire in Black and Gold", by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 2008, 624 pages, 194k words. Book 1 of 10 in the "Shadows of the Apt" series.

I have repeatedly mentioned how much I enjoy Tchaikovsky's work. I'm not sure why I bought this book, I'm guessing BookBub offered it to me for $1.99 or so.

This is quite a tome - 624 pages. Plot synopsis:

The world is populated by humans who are divided into races based on insect species they assimilated DNA from? Or? Clearly fantasy.

Each has different superpowers - Art that they can practice. Many species can conjure wings & fly. Insect species include:

• Ants - they are great warriors, & telepathic;
• Beetles - the engineers & merchants;
• Flies - the fastest fliers, very popular as messengers;
• Moths - they ruled everything until 500 years ago, when beetles & others became Apt: tech-savvy. Some races are Apt, others not, they cannot deal with tech at all;
• Mantises - the ultimate warriors, enforcers for the Moths;
• Dragonflies - non-Apt species living to the north;
• Wasps - the bad guys, imperialists knocking off other races' cities 1 by 1. All males are soldiers, enslaved races are tasked with the normal work of keeping their civilization running. Their superpower is shooting energy bolts from their palms - their "sting";
• Scorpions - desert dwellers;
• Various other species, some legendary.

So we follow a group of 4 college students, members of a fencing team put together by a beetle spymaster trying to wake cities up to the danger of the ever-encroaching wasps:

1. the spymaster's plain, nerdy niece ward, a beetle (Velma);
2. the spymaster's non-niece ward, a gorgeous ant hybrid (Daphne);
3. a dragonfly exchange student (Fred);
4. a beetle hybrid engineering geek (Shaggy).

OK, I'm sorry, but I couldn't help but get this totally mapped to Scooby-Doo! KMN.

The plotting is great, the characters are great (even the Scooby-Doo ones), the action is non-stop. The conclusion is satisfying, even though, yes, 9 sequels are looming. Tchaikovsky wrote 2 in 2009, 2010, 2011; 1 in 2012, 2013, 2014.

But 1 thing bothered me the whole time I was reading this. The various insect-friend subspecies of humans were referred to as "races" repeatedly. Is this not racist?

Level 1 racism is discriminating for or against people based on their race. This is now universally reviled, yes?

But, from what I have read - I think primarily David Graeber "Debt - the First 5000 Years" - race is not a scientific concept. It is a political concept, invented around the 17th century to justify the arbitrary enslavement of Africans.

In Rome, anyone could be a slave - it had nothing to do with "race". There were only a few ways one could become a slave: as a prisoner of war; being sold as a slave by one's parents; selling one's self into slavery.

So level 0 racism is believing that there is such a thing as race. It is not a concept in biology or genetics. There is only 1 race: the human race. All humans can interbreed & produce non-sterile offspring. It is mostly impossible to identify "race" analyzing human DNA. Science!

So in this book, by identifying different insect-aligned "races" - who can all appearently interbreed, meaning, by definition, that they are the same species - is racism being promoted?

If we go back to the wellspring of fantasy, Tolkien, he had "races": humans, elves, dwarves, wizards, orcs. They were the same species, yes, they could all interbreed? But, elves were immortal, humans not - halfbreeds not.

"Halfbreed" - what an offensive term. Humans breed with humans to produce more humans.

So I don't know what to make of this. We all want to oppose level 1 racism, but, somehow, we let level 0 racism slide? I'm not sure at all where I'm going with this? Maybe some bright young writer at tor.com or such will figure out what I am trying to say?

This book was very enjoyable, totally a page-turner. Tchaikovsky did not disappoint. But, I think I'm going to put the next 9 volumes on hold for the forseeable future. So I got that going for me now.