Adrian Tchaikovsky, science fiction and fantasy author

Exciting New Book Cover Reveal: House of Open Wounds

City-by-city, kingdom-by-kingdom, the Palleseen have sworn to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world. As their legions scour the world of superstition with the bright flame of reason, so they deliver a mountain of ragged, holed and scorched flesh to the field hospital tents just behind the frontline.

Which is where Yasnic, one-time priest, healer and rebel, finds himself. Reprieved from the gallows and sent to war clutching a box of orphan Gods, he has been sequestered to a particularity unorthodox medical unit.

Led by ‘the Butcher’, an ogre of a man who’s a dab hand with a bone-saw and an alchemical tincture, the unit’s motley crew of conscripts, healers and orderlies are no strangers to the horrors of war. Their’s is an unspeakable trade: elbow-deep in gore they have a first-hand view of the suffering caused by flesh-rending monsters, arcane magical weaponry and embittered enemy soldiers.

Entrusted – for now – with saving lives deemed otherwise un-saveable, the field hospital’s crew face a precarious existence. Their work with unapproved magic, necromancy, demonology and Yansic’s thoroughly illicit Gods could lead to the unit being disbanded, arrested or worse.

House of Open Wounds: Pre-Order

Beset by enemies within and without, the last thing anyone needs is a miracle…

House of Open Wounds follows on from City of Last Chances in the world of the Tyrant Philosophers, charting the ruthless Palleseen quest to bring their perfection to the rest of the world. Although this is book 2 of the series, it can also be read on its own without City of Last Chances (although hopefully, if you do, you’ll be moved to go back and pick up the first!)

Reading from the beginning of “House of Open Wounds” by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Performed by his wife at EasterCon 2023, Birmingham (as Adrian had lost his voice).

Pre-Order: Alien Clay

What’s it about? Well, SciFi Now is hosting the first chapter as an exclusive so keep an eye out for that.

However, in advance, here is an introduction from Adrian.

“Alien Clay is a book about human societies and alien ecologies. About how the things that are held up as being hard divisions and solid boundaries are all too often permeable. About what people and regimes try to control, and what they can’t.

Condemned to a labour camp on a distant exoplanet, scientist Artin Daghdev is thrown into a brutal prison camp run by a police state that holds the bodies and minds of its citizens in a ruthless grip. Beyond, he discovers a planet that doesn’t play by his rules of biology, ecology or evolution. On Kiln, Arton will learn that no law is inviolable, and no border can be relied upon, not even that between human and alien.

Who were the ancient Builders who littered Kiln with their ruins, where did they go, or are they still here…?”