The musician reveals his reading material of choice by British fantasy author Adrian Tchaikovsky
I love reading. I can’t get to sleep unless I read each night. It slows my thoughts somehow, puts me in a more settled place, no matter how violent or aggressive the stories themselves might be.
My latest discovery is an author called Adrian Tchaikovsky and a series of books called Shadows Of The Apt. In these stories humans are all associated with, and have certain features and aspects of, different insects. The cruel, war hungry Wasps, are ruthless empire builders. The strange and mysterious Moths, are still immersed in old magic and secrecy. The Mantid’s, the ultimate and deadliest of warriors but whose refusal to abandon the old ways of honour and battle are hastening their extinction. The intellectual and highly inventive Beetles, safe behind the walls of their city state Collegium. The illusively duplicitous Spiders, beautiful, powerful but not to be trusted. The Ants, whose entire race share thoughts and think as one – and many, many more, all interwoven into a world that works for the reader and yet is constantly at war with itself. For anyone who loves the High Fantasy genre it’s brilliantly inventive and epic stuff.
My life and career is built upon technology and even turning on the TV or lights in my house involves engaging a computer and a ‘control system’, so I find it enormously refreshing to read about a world where the most advanced machine is a clockwork powered ‘Orthopter’, a type of fragile little aeroplane that can flutter backwards if it chooses to.
