Book cover for Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky
2021 Released
176 Pages
2-3 Hours
★ 4.01 11,077 ratings
Audiobook Unavailable
Paperback Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
TordotcomISBN 9781250768711

"A Ursula Le Guin-like grace... Ten out of 10." —New York Times

In Adrian Tchaikovsky's Elder Race, a junior anthropologist on a distant planet must help the locals he has sworn to study to save a planet from an unbeatable foe.


Lynesse is the lowly Fourth Daughter of the queen, and always getting in the way.

But a demon is terrorizing the land, and now she’s an adult (albeit barely) with responsibilities (she tells herself). Although she still gets in the way, she understands that the only way to save her people is to invoke the pact between her family and the Elder sorcerer who has inhabited the local tower for as long as her people have lived here (though none in living memory has approached it).

But Elder Nyr isn’t a sorcerer, and he is forbidden to help, and his knowledge of science tells him the threat cannot possibly be a demon…

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, has practised law and now writes full time. He's also studied stage-fighting, perpetrated amateur dramatics and has a keen interest in entomology and table-top games.

Adrian is the author of the critically acclaimed Shadows of the Apt series, the Echoes of the Fall series and other novels, novellas and short stories. Children of Time won the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award, and Children of Ruin and Shards of Earth both won the British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel. The Tiger and the Wolf won the British Fantasy Award for Best Fantasy Novel, while And Put Away Childish Things won the BSFA Award for Best Shorter Fiction.

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