This kicked off what would be a ten-book series and introduced his highly original universe, populated by different humanoid races with the characteristics of insects. Take Tchaikovsky’s series Shadows of the Apt, which began with his debut novel Empire of Black and Gold, published in 2008.

Mephistophelian beard notwithstanding, he’s also a thoroughly nice chap if you run into him at a con or event, if somewhat a little over-fond of creepy-crawly sort of things. Studying zoology and psychology at Reading, he then worked for a solicitor’s in Leeds, West Yorkshire, where he now lives and cuts a tall, imposing figure. Tchaikovsky, born in Lincolnshire in 1972, had a varied career before he became a full-time writer in 2018.

Adrian Tchaikovsky loves spiders almost as much as you hate them. His work is on an epic scale, crossing galaxies and tackling the big themes – aliens, artificial intelligence, the relationship between magic and technology, the divide between gods and mortals. Added to that the Rex sections are a bit repetitive as he struggles to work out if he is being a good or bad dog throughout.Adrian Tchaikovsky is, if you’ll excuse the painfully obvious pun, a maestro of science fiction and fantasy. If I was to pick at things that might put some off it would be that although the narration is overall of a very good standard, especially in the Rex sections, when we switch to Laurence Bouvard Rex suddenly sounds very weak, not surprisingly so hardly her fault but I found it distracting. There is a lot of action and it is brought to a very satisfying conclusion in terms of the story of Rex and his master being completed. It's another clever book though rather shorter and definitely more easily accessible than Children of Time. Just what does happen when you augment animals with tech and ask them to fight your battles? Dogs of War explores the relationship between a loyal dog and its master when that relationship is abused by it being used with bad intent. In Dogs of War he once again explores the best and worst of human behaviour with everyone's favourite target, big business, once again coming under fire.

I guess it shouldn't surprise me given that Tchaikovsky had me rooting for an race of alien spiders in his previous book that in this one he got me attached to a partly robot killer dog called Rex! This is one clever author, albeit one who is jaundiced against the human race, though being often of similar persuasion I can't fault him for that.

Adrian tchaikovsky dogs of war