The Bear and the Serpent

Written by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Narrated by Kyla Garcia

As the south is in turmoil, an old terror emerges in the north . . .

Maniye, child of both Wolf and Tiger clans, has been named Champion of her people. But they're unsure if she's an asset—or a threat. To buy time, she joins Prince Tecuman's warband of outcasts and heads south, to help him gain his crown. She wants to discover her true place in the world, but instead heads into the jaws of a fierce new conflict.

Civil war threatens as Tecuman and his twin sister battle for the throne, for only one can rule. Yet whoever triumphs will carry a heavy burden, as a great doom has been foreseen that will fall across their whole world. And soon Maniye finds herself at the heart of a political storm.

Danger is also shadowing her old home, where Lord Thunder and his bear clan are attempting to unite the northern tribes. But only extreme peril will end age-old rivalries. An adversary from the most ancient of times is preparing to strike, putting their lands and their very souls in danger. And neither north nor south will be spared the terror to come.

The Bear and the Serpent is the second book in Adrian Tchaikovsky's epic fantasy series, Echoes of the Fall, following The Tiger and the Wolf.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Apr 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781509864607

Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, has practised law and now writes full time. He’s also studied stage-fighting, perpetrated amateur dramatics and has a keen interest in entomology and table-top games. Adrian is the author of the critically acclaimed Shadows of the Apt series, the Echoes of the Fall series and other novels, novellas and short stories. Children of Time won the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award, Children of Ruin and Shards of Earth both won the British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel and The Tiger and the Wolf won the British Fantasy Award for Best Fantasy Novel.

Reviews for The Bear and the Serpent

[Madhav Deshpande · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“We are the deaths of all your careful tomorrows.”

I have enjoyed this book probably more than I should. Why? Because as exciting and well written as it is, what transpires in the pages of this instalment is essentially rendered meaningless by the ending. That means: a perfect book no 2.

The worst what a reader can expect is that s/he will continue a tale of Maniye, an errant child of the Wolf and a rebellious daughter of the Tiger and Asmander, an underachieving son of an ambitious father, and their quest to control their own destinies. This is not happening. While all the books in the Echoes of the Fall trilogy are set in the same universe of bronze era shapeshifting tribes and sport roughly the same set of protagonists, the titles hint very clearly which of the totems and hence which of the characters will take the lead.

As expected, Maniye and her band of the mad, the broken, and the unfitting go south to a different land, different customs, values and different gods (although I still do not get how is it that dog is too small to ride a human soul and a toad is not) and promptly land in the middle of a power struggle. But can there be firm battle lines drawn through the estuaries, bogs and mashes? As Maniye navigates the waters of the new environments and balances between being partly a guest and partly a mercenary, she needs to learn a whole set of new lessons. Similarly, Asmander, either will learn how to have as many faces as souls or face death as a choice.

Nevertheless, these two are far from being the main voices in The Bear and the Serpent. I was surprised by how little Maniye was there; when she appeared at one point, I was literally muttering to myself “and where did you come from?!” as she basically vanished for several chapters. Nevertheless, there are reasons for this.

Firstly, I am glad of the many different POVs in this instalment. They really added a flavour to this story. We see some new faces, like the half-mad Crow Feeds on Rags and just slightly mad Coyote girl Sathewe, but also old acquaintances: Venat (all the world’s chaos and anarchy in one name) who grow exponentially and stops being just a menace with foul breath, Shyri the Hyena, and even Kalameshli Takes Iron. We see more of the Serpent that thrives on secrets and wisdom. But it is undoubtedly Loud Thunder who steals the show. This is the second reason for multivocality. The story itself is far from linear and also becomes distinctly multifocal. Equally important (if not even more salient) events take place in the North, among the Seals and other tribes we have already met in the previous book. So much happens there and of such momentous consequences, that the whole Southern brouhaha feels like an interlude rather than a step in the story (you see the problem here, don’t you?).

The developments in the North are simply magnificent in how terrifying they are. Mr Tchaikovsky spins such horror, such abomination, that when reading I felt hollow inside. Again, his creativity is shining. This time he had me googling prehistoric badgers (who apparently had dinosaurs for breakfast) and all these amazing elements, coupled with excellent writing meant that I did not mind the fact that the book has been a tad too long, and a little bit pointless. Even some YA features that seem to be more pronounced (that finale to the Southern katzenjammer!) were not that jarring.

All in all, a pleasant intermezzo in the story proper with only marginal developments with regards to the main tale. I appreciated the fact that the story becomes less Maniye-centred and more an epic tale of civilizational survival. While the personal bonds forged in the previous book are still important, now bigger things are at stake. The Serpent and the Bear was less intimate but not less intense.