Soh Kam Yung reviewed The Expert System's Champion by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Expert System, #2)
On aliens and humans learning to live together, sometimes literally
4 stars
A fascinating follow-up that reveals more about the biology of the alien world, and how it can interact and interface with the biology of humans in unexpected ways.
In the first book, Handry gets 'Severed', resulting in his biology reverting to the original state and become unable to interact with the biology on the alien world. He now leads a group of similarly Severed people, and they have come to an accommodation with the villages of people altered to live with the alien planet's biology. But one village still fear the Severed, and it sends out a Champion to challenge and drive away the Severed.
But the Champion is the least of Handry's problems when they discover a bigger threat that has destroyed one village and is threatening another. Handry, his group and the Champion have to discover the threat that the new danger poses; a danger that the reader …
A fascinating follow-up that reveals more about the biology of the alien world, and how it can interact and interface with the biology of humans in unexpected ways.
In the first book, Handry gets 'Severed', resulting in his biology reverting to the original state and become unable to interact with the biology on the alien world. He now leads a group of similarly Severed people, and they have come to an accommodation with the villages of people altered to live with the alien planet's biology. But one village still fear the Severed, and it sends out a Champion to challenge and drive away the Severed.
But the Champion is the least of Handry's problems when they discover a bigger threat that has destroyed one village and is threatening another. Handry, his group and the Champion have to discover the threat that the new danger poses; a danger that the reader may be able to guess based on the interludes in the story that looks at the attempts of a group from the first colonist to try to live with the alien biology.
In the end, they all learn a little more about living together on the alien world and maybe discover not to fear each other so much.
