Dove right back into the Dogs of War books from Adrian Tchaikovsky with "Bee Speaker." Time skip to the Earth after it falls apart.

The Earth has been wrecked, total environmental and societal collapse. But Mars has been thriving. Rallied in the face of their lifeline disappearing, and accepted Bee's intervention. Then one day a signal comes to Mars. "For the sake of what once was. We beg you. Help." What's a good neighbor to do but pop in on the now slightly feral old country?

Reasons to read:
-I am glad that there is one planet that accepted the threat climate change presents
-The rich, eventually, being punished
-Other Bees
-The passage of time and location impacting the design of bioforms
-The dispersed intelligences having a bit of a crisis

Cons:
-Yea that's probably how it's going to go

“No one great natural disaster, no all-consuming world war, no catastrophic pandemic… Not one finishing stroke for the great global human society, but you could still bleed to death from a thousand cuts.”

Taking place centuries later in a dystopian world where the top percent has refused to give up their luxurious way of living to save the planet, those who have made a life on Mars answer a distress call from Earth asking for help. This book gave me a range of emotions - disgust, happiness, sadness, humor, hope, anxiousness.
I thought this was a great end to the trilogy. As usual, I fell in love with the characters, especially Irae. Tchaikovsky does an amazing job of giving each character its own personality, and enjoyed each POV equally.

This one will require you to go to the bookstore. It is worth it. If Dad's already read the first two books, it's a no-brainer...of course he wants this one. If he is a fan of Author Adrian's work, getting all three is a slightly pricier alternative, but about 97% probability of being a huge hit.

If he hasn't read the first two novels, though, this is set in their medium-term future, and requires no knowledge not given in the narrative here to understand what's going on. I've read both previous books and didn't feel it was a huge advantage; more a mild fillip of some extra fun to be had.

Four Martians respond to the Old Homestead's pretty vague plea for help. The story has chapters the way a ham has calories...lots and lots and all distributed in tasty hunks of richly marbled language. There are multiple PoVs, nine in all. Each one is moving the story...about the way the kindest intentions get deeply enmeshed in very challenging realities of human fallibility...and oftentimes in ways that aren't supposed to be funny, but are.

If your Dad is like me, deeply suspicious of any kind of AGI that pretends to infallibility or omniscience, then this is a great series to hook him on. Nothing about Bees, the Martian distributed consciousness (AGI rebranded), long ago banished from the severely collapsing Earth, is infallible, though it is good-hearted. The crisis of climate collapse is one Bees can definitely help remediate, you'd think, that being part of Bees' memories; but centuries on Mars have overlaid a lot of unhelpful knowledge. The Martian bioforms are such a great idea, and you *know* I approve of intelligent dog-forms! Their terrestrial rescuees are the usual lot of mired-in-muck religious nuts, feudal static thinkers who need help but only want it to look like their idea of a perfect present, and passive whiners. Al the Martians are oddly indulgent IMO. I'd've kicked ass, banged heads...but these rescuers really seem to try to stay helpful.

Ultimately, I'd give this to Dad because the very human-Dadly thing of needing to Fix It, to Help and to Serve a Purpose, all get a strong run. I enjoyed the story, I didn't feel it was tacked onto the end of a duology (a critique I saw that I found particularly unfair...it's been two hundred years since Bear Head so of course things changed!), and the overarching critique of flawed, fallible humanity was challenging but not bleak.

A lot like being a Dad.

Great series conclusion where we get to see the after effects of all the f ups of humanity. I'm glad Bees makes such a prominent section of this as its the one poverty we haven't gotten much of!

I wasn't expecting how much of a time jump there was between this and Bear Head, but hell, it means I get a political thriller set in a post apocalyptic Earth that features monasteries and war bands. The various paths Earth and Mars have taken in this far blown future are interesting, and of course it all comes into conflict because a well meaning group from Mars responds to a distress signal from Earth, and they realize just how far apart their experiences are. There's nine separate characters, but Tchaikovsky manages to balance them all and bring them all together amazingly and in unexpected ways, which is hard to do with ensemble work. Hell of a ride, and definitely worth your time.

This is a fabulous series and I was very pleased to get an advance copy of the book for review. But I’m a very slow reader compared with my audiobook habit, so I only got about 69% of the way when my library offered up the audiobook. The rest of the novel was finished in a day. There are three readers of the audiobook, including the author, and they do a fabulous job.
Back to the novel itself, this jumps into the far future after Earth’s infrastructure has collapsed, after the multi-billionaires have extracted all the shareholder value they could from the planet, set themselves up as the ruling class, then finding they don’t really know how to rule when basic needs aren’t being met. There are factions now. A factory where puppies are turned into humaniformed warrior dogs or destroyed; the Apiary where monks live and follow the way of the Bees for conflict resolution, and the tribal communities that often live underground and require tithing from everyone else.
To this Earth come 4 members of the Mars Crisis Crew, here to help. What could go wrong?
As usual, Tchaikovsky delivers complex, sentient characters in different shapes and sizes, taking us on a memorable adventure that, in the end, has much to say about our current state of affairs.
My thanks to the author, publisher, and #NetGalley for early access to #BeeSpeaker for review purposes (and to @Sno-IslesLibrary for first dibs on the excellent audiobook). Both formats are now available.

Adrian Tchaikovsky extends his prolific catalog by adding to one of his older series, Dogs of War. Continuing after Bear Head, Bee Speaker explores themes of cybernetic enhanced animals, intercultural (and interstellar) first contact, hive intelligence, and in classic Tchaikovsky fashion, peering into the esoteric void of what it means to really be “human”.


Bee Speaker is set two centuries after the events of Bear Head, and as the name suggests, this time around, our beloved mad scientist author draws from his extensive entomological background to dive into the hive mind of Bees (uppercase because they aren’t your average honeybees). When the now-settled Martian colony receives a call for help from a near-extinct Earth, the survivors of the great follies of our blue-green planet set out from the red planet to provide what aid they can.

Their arrival kicks the hive (yes, bee puns) upsetting the delicate peace between the scholarly Apiary, the industrial Factory (breeding enhanced Dogs and other Animals — tying in from previous entries in the series), and the Mad Max-esque Bunkermen with their anachronistic beliefs of honor-coded machismo.

Our unlikely heroes are the future-human Ada, crippled by the maladaptive Earth conditions, the Martian enhanced-Dog Wells, and the reptiliform (part lizard, part dragon, totally awesome!) Irae. The trio encapsulates three of the cornerstones of the human condition, Ada — the suffering hopeful, Wells — the loyal helper, and Irae — the personification of barely controlled wrath, the dark and sharp claws of ruthless efficiency.

On the Earth-side, we have a mishmash of POV characters. Cricket, the hapless Apiary monk drawn into events beyond his meager understanding of the post-Crash Earth. The Bunkermen are described through the eyes of the matriarch Serval — cunning yet protective, navigating her way through the patriarchal trappings of the post-apocalyptic warrior tribes left on Earth. The perspective of the Factory told via the Dog Deacon, his unfailing loyalty, testament to the might and governance of the Factory. We also have the esoteric characters, like the Witch, other (spoiler-y) non-human characters and the eponymous Bees.

Tchaikovsky excels beyond his peers, not only in personifying, but humanizing non-human, and sometimes weirdly sentient beings, in a way that feels both transcendental yet understandable, touching upon very human emotions, and motivations, albeit at the very farthest fringes of his own imagination. In describing the hivemind of Bees, and the personification of the various enhanced Bioforms, he blends human tendencies with the constraints of their animal-analog, giving us a fresh yet familiar take on the “cyborg” genre. In particular, the reptiliform Irae overshadowed even the titular insects. The sassy and deathly efficient black-ops cyberserpent is exactly the level of “just damn cool” we find ourselves sorely lacking from many sci-fi entries lately. Their counterplay with the paragon Wells, was comically yet emotively enjoyable.

The plot of Bee Speaker follows a pretty linear route and provided fewer surprises than the standard Tchaikovsky fare and his worldbuilding felt sparser than his other series, relying on a much tighter perspective rather than his usual expansive storytelling. While standout characters like Irae, Wells, and Serval gave the novel plenty of charm and drive to the plot, Cricket and Ada’s sections felt laborious and felt more exposition-heavy than required. Following his now-stereotypical format, Tchaikovsky regales us with his uncanny-till-the-final-reveal interludes, and his non-humaniform chapters had the danger of disorienting all but the most veteran sci-fi consumer. Some of his overlapping chapters, retelling key events from various character vantages also led to uneven pacing which many will find grating.

Flaws notwithstanding, Bee Speaker continues Tchaikovsky’s unparalleled penchant of exploring and coalescing disparate themes via the vehicle of a quick-moving plot. His imagination-churn rivals none, and going through his catalog, one can only imagine, where the mad-doctor will take us next!

All hail the Swarm. All hail Bees!

Thank you to Netgalley, Mr. Tchaikovsky, and the publisher for the ARC!

Adrian Tchaikovsky has quickly become one of my favorite authors, for so many reasons but the biggest one being that his novels (and novellas) make me <i>think</i>. There's no quick reading for me with a Tchaikovsky novel and I really enjoy that.

I asked for this ARC without knowing it was a trilogy and it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Because even though I saw the first (Dogs of War) and thought "Maybe not for me," I soon learned I was very, very wrong. This trilogy is astounding. And Bee Speaker rounds it out perfectly.

We are years in the future after the second book (Bear Head) where Mars has completed its colony expansion and now we're back to Earth. A broken, destroyed Earth that the trilogy had been leading toward. But now they have reached out via a signal begging Mars for help. And Mars answers.

Tchaikovsky is masterful at differentiating characters by not just personalities but also, in this case, animal/Bioform aspects. The inner turmoil each faces because of their position in the world, and the truths uncovered in the world around them, gives them a more realistic feel. Despite the fact that some were in third person and some were in first, I felt like I knew them all as individuals.

I loved the thought behind the technology - both New and Old - that went into making Earthlings go to Mars and vice versa. There's always a depth to the world that proves it was more than a fleeting thought of, "wouldn't this be cool?" and a real consideration for how it could work.

This trilogy may have been my favorite read of the year. One I had never thought I would like but instead, am going to be buying hard copies of and forcing my husband to read them.

I hate bees, but man do I love Bees.

For the third installment in his Dogs of War series, Adrian Tchaikovsky focuses on the distributed intelligence known as Bees, which is about time for me. In a lot of ways, Bees was perhaps the most interesting part of the original work in the series.

The first book, Dogs of War, was released in 2017 and featured the main storyline with Rex, a dog bioform who is the leader of a motley crew of animal bioforms -- himself, Honey (a bear bioform), Dragon (a reptile), and Bees (literally just bees). The first novel was set near-future and explored what it means to be human and if the consciousness’ of bioforms entitles them to the same rights as “mankind.”

In 2021, Tchaikovsky released Bear Head, featuring Honey. The Mars setting for a lot of it gives it a bit of a Total Recall vibe and the story features a lot into media personalities and free will. Honey plays a key part in the book, but is by no means the main character. Bees plays a key role as well…on Mars as one of the early colonizers and also back on Earth as they have split their intelligence.

I liked, but didn’t really love the first two books. Rex is and forever will be a Good Boy, and I really like Honey the Bear, but in both books it was just hard for me to put myself in their shoes (maybe cuz dogs and bears don’t wear shoes?) but in the end, it actually was easier at times to empathize with the bioforms (the animals) than with the humans (especially Thompson from Bear Head). There is a lot to like and I’m glad I read them, but I just didn’t resonate with those books. Not like I did with Bee Speaker.

No one can accuse Adrian Tchaikovsky of not being imaginative. Each book in this series is so wildly different from the others in terms of tone and setting and he makes even the hardest of sci-fi concepts so digestible. It would have been so easy for him to set this book on Mars after the events of Bear Head and invent some reason why Bees has to be the hero of the day.

Instead, in Bee Speaker we return to Earth…a planet which has lost control of itself and its technology. All that happened in the days of Rex, Honey, Dragon, and Bees is the Old time. The people of Earth have devolved into a neo-feudalistic society of sorts. Bees is revered as a type of God among some -- an invisible deity capable of great works, but before their time. Other people form up in abandoned bunkers, quasi-manors with a medieval hierarchy at play. And lastly, the remnants of the Old time, the Dog Factory where bioforms are still produced and some of the last vestiges of technology is still utilized.

Dropped into the middle of all of that are four Martians, returning to Earth after getting a signal from the Earth Bees. Of course, it’s a Tchaikovsky book and things do not go swimmingly for our intrepid adventurers on their return to their ancestral planet.

One of the things I loved about this book was two opposing views of what the future may bring. On Earth, disinformation and politics killed society as they knew it and the little technology humans had in Bee Speaker was often beyond their comprehension. Mars, on the other hand, almost collapsed from some of the same factors in Bear Head, but was saved by Bees and Honey and went on to be more of a communal civilization where everyone worked together and pushed technology onward and forward. Those two sides of the knife’s edge were on full display throughout this Bee Speaker. In the end, just like in Bear Head, the subject of the book -- Bees -- isn’t our main character, but instead acts as more of the MacGuffin towards the final quarter of the novel.

In the end, it may be a fairly simple novel in its story, but Bee Speaker is a great addition to the Dogs of War series, introducing some memorable characters and pushing the bounds of what it actually means to be “human.”

Thank you to Head of Zeus for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

A worthy continuation of a solid series!

When I requested, I didn't realize it was part of a series, and I'm still really new to Adrian Tchaikovsky. But I found it very enjoyable nonetheless.

I am going to need to get to the rest of the series!

⭐️ 4

The entire concept of this book was entertaining. I felt that, of all the Adrian Tchaikovsky books I have read recently (this is my third book by him), this one was the most accessible. Yet it was still a bit hard to follow, as it jumped from narrator to narrator. Especially jarring was the transition from a human narrator to an alien or bioform. Once again, I think it has more to do with the fact that I am pretty much a science fiction novice, and his books are hard for me to grasp. His imagination and themes are so far-reaching that I have difficulty picturing them while reading. However, I cannot give lower than four stars simply because I recognize the talent behind the story. I enjoyed the story and the conflict; the characters were easier to sympathize with than in other books I've read. And the story moved along at a nice pace.

Thank you to NetGalley, Bloomsbury USA, and Head of Zeus for the eARC. These opinions are mine.

Adrian Tchaikovsky's 2017 novel Dogs of War went largely unnoticed in north America, which is a shame because it was among the best science fiction novels of the decade. It was tightly paced, filled with philosophical ideas, and centred around three fascinating characters: Rex, Bees, and Honey. Dogs of War did not need a sequel, but I'm glad that it received them — with Bear Head following the story of Honey, and the newest volume Bee Speaker following Bees.

Now, neither Bear Head nor Bee Speaker lives up to the first book, as that would be near-impossible. However, each of them plays with the ideas of freedom and hierarchy that were introduced in Dogs of War.

Bee Speaker looks at the ways in which hierarchy was constructed historically — both through religion and through feudalism. It's a book with some DNA from post-apocalyptic works like Canticle For Liebowicz, but also is somewhat akin to The Martian General's Daughter. There's a lapsarianism, and a cyclical view of history.

It's a book I'll be mulling over for quite a while. Highly recommended.

Thank you #NetGalley and Head of Zeus for the free review copy of #BeeSpeaker.

Adrian Tchaikovsky returns to the Dogs of War universe with Bee Speaker, a smart, layered, and surprisingly emotional continuation of his bioengineered saga. As always, he blends cutting-edge science fiction with sharp social commentary.

Bee Speaker explores new territory in this world of sentient bioforms, giving us a fresh protagonist and a unique perspective. The thematic focus on communication, collective intelligence, and autonomy is handled with thoughtfulness and complexity. Some reviews I have read expressed dislike of the multiple perspectives, I rather found it quite engaging.

What I appreciated most was how the novel balances big ideas with strong emotional arcs. While it doesn’t have quite the raw impact of Dogs of War (Book 1), it more than holds its own, expanding the universe while deepening its philosophical roots. Some pacing issues in the middle and a slightly rushed climax kept it from a full 5 stars for me, but it’s still a compelling read.

Tchaikovsky continues to prove he’s one of the most consistently inventive voices in sci-fi today. Bee Speaker is a thoughtful, compelling addition to the series.

4 stars!

Surprisingly, I truly enjoyed this! The story is satisfying, although largely plays out as expected. Happily, though, it leaves a rich combination of characters, organistions, and power relationships that are ripe with potential for another novel in the series if the author so chooses… something I will be looking out for.

I really admire what Adrian Tchaikovsky has done with this series. From a first novel that is a pretty standard (if well-done) "bio-/genetically/cybernetically modified super-soldiers break free of their expected subservience" kind of story, each of the two successive books have gone in interesting and unexpected directions. By this point, the setting is hundreds of years in the future, on an Earth where society has totally fallen (with a few enclaves of social structure sputtering along in a bit of a Leibowitzian way), with Tchaikovsky using the Bioform/Distributed Intelligence technologies around which the first two books circled in new, but totally believable ways extrapolated from their previous representations. I get the impression from one throwaway line in the acknowledgements that Tchaikovsky had no intention of writing a new story in the series but an idea just percolated up years later, which is a kind of sequel I always find interesting. Certainly (while reading the previous books would benefit the experience) it could be nearly stand-alone, the setting being so far in the future (and so technologically regressed) from the previous book(s). As such I'm going to have to think hard on whether I include it on my own Hugo ballot for best novel (something I would almost never do for book three in any series). As a Best Series nomination, it's an absolute slam dunk.

Another banger by Tchaikovsky! It started out about a bit confusing, but once all the perspectives had been introduced it was easy to keep reading. I am consistently amazed at how Tchaikovsky is able to bring to life the very different perspectives. Thanks to Bloomsbury USA and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Bee Speaker (Dogs of War, #3)
Bee Speaker by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wild.

To be entirely honest, I thought it started out really rough. I kinda hated all the characters and thought they were too stupid to live and you probably wouldn't have been able to change my mind until near the half-way mark.

And then something happened.

No, they didn't get smarter. Indeed, maybe I just got stupider. But the book became fun. Really fun. A wild, messed-up roller-coaster of stupidity, good-naturedness applied to all the wrong places, and unhinged ultraviolence also applied to all the wrong places.

By 2/3, I was chortling and rearing for more and you couldn't pay me to put it down.

So yeah, it's one of THOSE books. And because it's Tchaikovsky, it's an obligatory read AND worth it.

I have never read any of this authors works, but have heard good things. I also did not read the other two books in this series but i thought it could be read as a standalone. I love the idea of the ideas, however i didn't feel gripped. I do feel like i was able to understand the world building, but it wasn't my cup of tea. I do think it will be alot of peoples, just not mine!

Tchaikovsky is a master at exploring alien minds and this book is no exception. Well meaning Martians and biolife forms return to Earth after the Crash. Their attempts to rescue an alien mind, the Bees, of Earth starts backfiring dramatically, upsetting the delicate balance between the Factory, the Apiary, The Griffens, a group of savage bunker dwellers, and everyone else inside the area of control. The amount of bioengineered lifeforms is vast, their qualities differing and their minds fascinating. Even the Martians have been changed dramatically from human base stock. They have returned to a world where the bioengineered are mostly seen as monsters, immortal old ones still live, diverse intelligences try to lie low to avoid conflict with the dangerous human species. This book is a fascinating play with differing sentients, cultures and modern mythologies used to control social groups. It is a book of blunders, wonders and hives and a group of Martians who have stumbled in and kicked up the nests.

I have been asking for More Bees™ since book one, and this book indeed delivers More Bees. Kind of.

Tchaikovsky's third entry into the Dogs of War series brings us back to Earth again, but Earth is not how we left it in books one and two. Civilization has undergone changes, with people fleeing from the established big cities and settling in smaller groups. And bunkers. And monasteries. And though the monastery called the Apiary worships Bees, there's something misleading afoot...

Much like in books one and two, Tchaikovsky has a knack for creating relatable, flawed characters with different motivations and vastly different ideas on how they should achieve a common goal (personally, I think Irae had the idea right from the start...).

<spoiler> Factory Bees and the error file found by Tecumo that lead to his death - what a horrifying prospect. This is not the Bees I was demanding. </spoiler>

Thanks to author, publisher, and NetGalley for the eARC. I think this is supposed to be the last entry in the series, but <i>what if</i> Bees in space?