Fiction Reviews
Green City Wars
(2026) Adrian Tchaikovsky, Tor, £22, hrdbk, 351pp, ISBN 978-1-035-04572-3
'Down these mean streets a beast must walk ... or at least beneath them.'
In a solar-powered future, humans live in luxury, served by unseen Little Helpers – artificially enhanced animals who maintain their perfect green cities. The animals’ golden rule: ‘Do Not Bother the Humans’. Yet beneath this tranquil facade, a complex underworld of animal politics, crime and conflict thrives. Enter Skotch, a freelance raccoon investigator. His biggest problem was a lack of work. Now, his work may get him killed. And his latest case? Finding a fugitive mouse scientist. But powerful forces are also after the mouse, and they're willing to kill for his secrets. Can Skotch navigate this treacherous web, outsmart rat gangsters, beat a deadly weasel assassin and keep his pelt intact? More importantly, can he find his quarry before the elusive rodent breaks Rule One in the most apocalyptic way – and shatters their fragile world.
It is hard to keep up with Adrian Tchaikovsky given all the series he has written, as well as the standalone novels; and it is sometimes hard to keep up with things when you are in the middle of one of his novels, fortunately Green City Wars starts with a 'Dramatis Personae and Glossary' which lists the characters, organisations and factions, places, and terms and things you are about to encounter. A handy reference to have when you can’t remember who Nimoy is (actually a rat scientist), or what maulkrankeit is (the lowering of intellect in augmented animals due to a lack of plangent). This is then followed by the narrative itself, told in five parts – Graycoat Turf, Madparrot Alley, Separations, Not Rocket Science, and Battle Lines – with these parts further divided into mostly five chapters. It is a standalone novel, so Tchaikovsky says, but he does also say most of his novels are standalone until he decides to write a sequel or prequel, so watch this space.
It is time to walk the mean streets of the city, well, the city under the city in the company of Skotch, a genetically modified raccoon and, more or less, private detective, who has been hired to find Doctor Meese, a missing mouse scientist which seems a relatively straightforward job until he finds himself in the middle of all the politics and rivalries, and even warring factions beneath the city.
Tchaikovsky being Tchaikovsky has come up with a great setting with a society existing below the city, populated by a wide range of characters, who supply some great noir-ish dialogue, combined with events to drive the novel through Skotch’s interactions with rats and pigeons, and weasels and crows and parrots, all with a particular role to play. While the novel itself comes across as a hard-boiled detective story in the mould of Raymond Chandler, or my favourite Ross MacDonald. However given the vast cast, I’m also reminded of the work of Damon Runyon and his stories featuring a colourful cast of hustlers, gamblers, and actors, all with their verbal tics.
While being very entertaining on one level there is also a deeper questioning of the city itself – perfect for the humans above, but not so perfect for the enhanced animals below who are little more than slave labour with the so-called Little Helpers being enslaved by the supplement called plangent which gives them their boosted intelligence. My only minor quibble is that while Tchaikovsky is too good a writer to employ info-dumps, there is a lot going on here, which perhaps detracts from the central mystery before things are pulled together for the final act. But major quibbles aside, Green City Wars is clever, funny, and wildly inventive, what more do you need?
Ian Hunter
[Up: Fiction Reviews Index | SF Author: Website Links | Home Page: Concatenation]
[One Page Futures Short Stories | Recent Site Additions | Most Recent Seasonal Science Fiction News]