Collecting And Reading

Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
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Fade into a private investigators office. Black and white. Smoky. Old timey Americana. The PI sits alone in his chair drinking coffee. This is Skotch. Skotch is a raccoon.

And this, is Green City Wars.

Green City Wars is nothing new. It is every single detective noir mystery thriller that has ever existed.

But there is one thing that makes it magnificent.

Every character is a sentient, bio-engineered animal.

Skotch, the down on his luck PI.
Benson, a company man, sorry, a company turtle.
Szerky, a stoatweasel enforcer killer.
And Doctor Meese, the scientist everyone is searching for.

And a host of other unique, personality strong animal characters.

All of these bio-engineered animals are on a ticking clock to keep themselves sentient. There’s an underground sub-system of capitalist nightmares below the humans’ of the Green City’s feet.

The constant fight and struggle to earn enough to make your sentience stretch to the next day, week, or month, is enough to cause vicious deception, brutal violence, and underhand skull-duggery at every turn. This is not a safe space for these animals, and whether they thrive, survive, or expire, is often out of their hands (or paws/claws/talons).

This is most definitely not a cutesy, animal, fun free for all. It’s a deep exploration of a deep rooted society that is engrained with classism, communism, worker rights and ethics, and warring political and theological perspectives.

It’s a book I read almost entirely in Sin City style, New York and Bostonian narration, all sepia and constant rain and moodiness. You’d leave this book feeling like you want to invest in a trilby and trench coat, and immerse yourself in deep noir detective thrillers of the early 20th Century.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s mind is amazing and his standalone stories are all so district that I cannot wait to read them when I find out he’s releasing another. His ability to merge both his own writing style, and subvert, but align his narratives with per-existing genres is so well done that I find myself in a little bit of disbelief every time I read another of his stories that hits so well.

This one will genuinely leave you pondering the societal structures of our own working vs. ruling elite, and all’s I’ll say is that are we really that different to animals?

4.0/5.0