Elder Race is Adrian Tchaikovsky's fantasy/science fiction novel set in a colony of Earth that has lost contact with the home planet. It starts with what looks like a typical fantasy quest, the fourth daughter of a queen embarking to seek the help of a wizard for an insoluble problem, and then switches the perspective to that of the wizard, who turns out to be a junior Anthropologist abandoned on the planet he was supposed to study.
The book switches perspective between the two protagonists, and we get both the technical views of the situations as well as the raw fantasy view. The anthropologist communicates through a translator, and there's a fantastic section where he explains the origins of the colony and the translator translate it into a high fantasy explanation in parallel. The book shows both texts side by side and it makes for great reading.
The book is short and doesn't outstay its welcome. It covers common other themes such as the prime directive as well as developing the characters and providing plausible explanations of stereotypical wizard behavior. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Recommended.
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