Elder Race

Here's the premise: Humans explore space, establishing settlements across the galaxy. Something happens, and all the settlements are on their own for hundreds of years. Many devolve to pre-industrial states without connection to other settlements. A revived Earth sends out research missions to all the settlements with a Prime Directive like instruction to observe but not interfere. But then something happens again and all the research missions lose contact with Earth, stranding researchers, who have access to life-extending health technology as well as other machines not available to local settlements.

Nyr is the stranded anthropologist. Lynesse, aka Lyn, is local settlement royalty, but is the 4th, and least important daughter. A corruption starts defeating outlying kingdoms. Royalty doesn't care much because they are outlying. Lynesse sees a bigger danger, and sets off to find the wizard of legend (Nyr) to convince him to help. Isolated and lonely, he agrees.

The story follows them in their journey, alternating points of view between Nyr and Lynesse. To him, it's just technology. To her, it's magic. They struggle to connect, and both struggle to understand if they have a chance to defeat a demon made of stuff that is unknown to both of them.

On the one hand, it's a lovely story of people trying to, and ultimately, coming together. And I mostly relate to it on that level. But also, there's a germ of ick at a dude who uses a vast power difference to be the impressive cool wizard. Tchaikovsky does a pretty good job of threading the needle so that Lynesse is both able to be impressed and also together enough not be be naive about the ancient wizard.

She is a fourth daughter of royalty with no hope of advancement in station, determined to invoke the promise of aid given to her ancestor generations ago by a powerful wizard when her mother refuses to engage a demon threatening the kingdom.

He is a long-lived exo-socialogist, sent to observe these people but not interfere. He broke that directive once before, many years ago, and now another of them has shown up at his outpost door...

I've never seen a story play with Clarke's Third Law ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.") like this before. Each chapter alternates POV between the two main characters, so it is half science fiction and half fantasy. Sometimes the same events are told both ways. The story is interesting on its own, but told this way it also becomes a lesson on empathy and understanding.

It surprisingly also became a story about severe depression, persevering through grief and trauma, methods of self care, and how mental anguish can appear from the POV of both those suffering and those around them.

And that will always endear this story to me.

This short novel is a fun cross between science fiction - junior anthropologist Nyr who is the only remaining member of a research expedition to observe a long-ago established and then lost colony - and a fairy tale fantasy - fourth-eldest princess Lynnesse sets off on a quest to win the help of the mythical wizard in order to save the land. The story is told from both viewpoints, so we alternately see Nyr as a depressed, despairing, second-class anthropologist and an incomprehensible, immortal, powerful wizard of legend; and the world they are on and the monsters they battle alternately as the stuff of fairy tales and the stuff of science. Even the language they use to communicate translates unexactly, so Nyr has literally no way to describe himself that doesn't translate into Lyn's language as "magician" or "sorceror" even though he is trying to say "scientist" or "academic" or similar.

The whole thing is a fun, very readable exploration of Clarke's Law that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. It was a quick read and I could easily have read more, but I enjoyed it.