In which Khiem learns to write

I've adored the two volumes in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series (and fully intend to read the other two), but I've been daunted in trying to branch out because the guy is SO prolific. But thanks to the recommendation of someone on here, I landed on Elder Race. It's a novella--handy! I read it in airports on my way to and from Leticia, and it was absolutely right for me, because putting aside the plot, what it's about is communication across a chasm of cultural difference, when you're not sure how what you're saying is being received, and you're also not sure if what you're understanding of what you hear is what the speaker intends. And on top of that, you're dealing with vast differentials in resources and--so you arrogantly assume (you're right in some respects, but very wrong in others)--knowledge.

It's also about what's wrong with the Prime Directive, namely, that once you're watching a thing, observing a thing, you're party to it, part of it. Your act of watching changes reality. Like with photons, or whatever. Schrödinger Heisenberg etc. If you weren't there, then yes, things would just unfold however they were going to unfold, but you are there, and so if you decide not to get involved, then it means you're permitting whatever bad things might happen that you might be capable of stopping.

Don't get me wrong: messing around and getting involved can be equally bad. All I'm saying is that once you're there, you ARE involved, and doing nothing is as much of a game changer as doing something.

Nyr is the resource-having character, assailed by depression because he's realized, upon being wakened from his most recent cryo-sleep, that his society back on Earth has likely died off, that he is the last of his people. He's woken by Lynesse Fourth Daughter, to whose lineage he made a promise some great grandmothers ago, when he last woke up and broke the Prime Directive by helping out said great-great (etc.) grandmother. This time, there's a demon to fight...

And the story unfolds. It was very fun to see Nyr from Lynesse (and her ally Esha)'s point of view, and to see them from his. The demon (it can't be a demon, Nyr thinks to himself, but in fact for all intents and purposes it IS a demon, very Stranger Things-ish) is suitably awful and scary.

There were two ways (to my mind) that the story could have ended for Nyr, and I definitely preferred the ending that Tchaikovsky chose, which goes along with his general outlook as I know it from the Children of Time books. About the only niggle I have with the story is that I'm not very satisfied with the finality of the demon vanquishing. I was kind of expecting more exploration/explanation of what it was, which would then let me believe in the permanence of its defeat, but as it's an eldritch horror from the Upside Down, pretty much, ehhhhnnnn, I feel like it might find its way back? But it's gone for now, and that'll have to do.