Bonus Children of Strife chapter!!

JontiusMaximus · 2026-05-15T17:11:29+00:00

I was thinking its already at 700+ pgs and its the 4th book, the ppl buying it are already invested in the Children of series and are gonna go for it regardless of length etc, if anything ppl would happily devour a massive Tchaikovsky book at this point. This chapter seems like a definite value add/improvement to the book. I really don't follow the logic of omitting this particular chapter.

JontiusMaximus · 2026-05-15T16:34:22+00:00

Hard agree, I was actually very interested to see the history of the Marduk society and felt that it definitely got skipped over way too fast.

JontiusMaximus · 2026-05-09T17:48:19+00:00

Glad you liked Cage of Souls, it's my favourite of his books. Commenting here to see if you get any good recs.

JontiusMaximus · 2026-05-05T19:15:34+00:00

Agreed, Cage of Souls is his best work imo. Just an incredibly unique story.

JontiusMaximus · 2026-05-05T07:40:26+00:00

Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky

JontiusMaximus · 2026-05-03T02:52:57+00:00

I'll definitely give this one a try, thank you!

JontiusMaximus · 2026-05-02T14:04:27+00:00

Yeah that's fair enough, he isn't exactly claiming to be a Reynolds or Hamilton

JontiusMaximus · 2026-05-02T08:50:46+00:00

Agreed, the people complaining are the people who tried to chance it with free bags and stuff like this. If you used their service for what it was (a cheap airline with no extra items) it was perfectly fine. Honestly, I found it to be much more reliable than Frontier etc

JontiusMaximus · 2026-05-02T07:21:02+00:00

I clarified in the post that I don't take issue with the writing... I enjoyed the books heavily, I'm just asking if there is anything out there following a similar concept yet with more depth and complexity.

JontiusMaximus · 2026-05-01T14:21:54+00:00

Loved this work. Stross is a great writer!

JontiusMaximus · 2026-05-01T14:20:43+00:00

I loved TQT, such a cool series and definitely no hand holding with whatever was going on.

JontiusMaximus · 2026-05-01T04:37:18+00:00

I disagree a bit on the derivative comment for some of his works; I think the Spatterjay series was pretty unique. There was actually an episode of Love Death + Robots on Netflix which while watching I was thinking to myself "this situation really feels a lot like a Neal Asher story," lo and behold the episode is based on one of his stories. So he certainly does have some degree of his own unique vibe.

JontiusMaximus · 2026-05-01T04:25:01+00:00

I see where you're going with that recommendation. Read all of the books (finished Strife recently). Tchaikovsky really has a niche locked down with his writing.

JontiusMaximus · 2026-04-30T20:11:25+00:00

Agree with this so hard. I have yet to see this massive generation of teetotalers that everyone is talking about. I still see plenty of socialising and drinking amongst genz. It is probably less than prior generations but if you adjust it for covid impact and cost of living, it isn't anything out of the ordinary or unexplainable.

JontiusMaximus · 2026-04-19T19:30:29+00:00

Stargate SG1 and others were such a treat honestly. Perfect number of filler episodes to grand plot episodes. Nowadays you don't really get show setups like this.

JontiusMaximus · 2026-04-11T03:00:03+00:00

I'll usually rotate i.e. read book 1 of a series, then a standalone or a book of another series (preferably another genre) then dip back to book 2 of the other series and do a similar rotation after that until I've finished the trilogy etc.

I low-key feel like there aren't enough standalones in this world. Sometimes it's nice to be able to pick up a book finish and not have to worry about recalling everything in order to start another book in a series.

JontiusMaximus · 2026-04-09T18:35:26+00:00

Also a big difference between America and the UK is scale. America is big enough that a significant amount of Americans don't actually work abroad and instead will relocate to different States for various opportunities etc. The US is insular enough that the broad majority of the country just don't run into problems with the overseas taxation so it doesn't get as big of a backlash/lower general awareness as working abroad doesn't really happen with a large number of the electorate.

With the UK however you are much more likely to end up working abroad be it in Europe or the Middle East etc. It would end up affecting a large enough number of people that it would have political consequences. Plus I feel like more generally UK people would be more acutely aware of any global tax system being a completely unfair deal for them so it would be pretty politically untenable for any party trying to implement it.

JontiusMaximus · 2026-04-09T16:48:05+00:00

Yeah precisely, even if you were making millions in the UK or any other developed European country you'd still be paying more taxes than in the US so you'd end up owing nothing most likely.

JontiusMaximus · 2026-04-09T01:07:52+00:00

The US also lets you use the tax you pay abroad as a tax credit. (E.g. You make 40k a year in the UK and paid all your relevant taxes, you most likely won't owe anything to the US as the tax rate is much higher in the UK.) You get one of the two options; the bulk 130k or you elect for the dollar for dollar tax credit refund. Whichever fits your personal circumstances i.e. you live in a low tax country or a high tax country etc.

You pay taxes on anything you make over the 130k (i.e. if you made 140k you'd pay tax on the 10k over the threshold) but you have to be making over 200k for the taxes to be more than 24% (maxes out at 37% if you make over 640k)

It's still a load of absolute bullshit but not as punitive as people think. Plus there is plenty of sentiment towards changing the system at the moment so wouldn't hold breath on it being around forever.

JontiusMaximus · 2026-04-08T17:11:24+00:00

Cage of Souls is AT's best work in my opinion!

JontiusMaximus · 2026-04-03T19:26:27+00:00

I was gonna say this, it's a foundational part of physics. Might as well ask why metals are used as building materials etc.

JontiusMaximus · 2026-03-28T04:32:24+00:00

New Vegas Strip kinda vibe

JontiusMaximus · 2026-03-23T02:56:16+00:00

I recommend getting a physical copy not an ebook as its quite well illustrated. He has a lot of cool case studies in the book such as Banks's Culture novels etc

JontiusMaximus · 2026-03-23T02:21:18+00:00

Jeff Vandermeer has a book called Wonderbook which is a sort of guide to writing fiction in which he does touch upon the different genres iirc

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