Another month, another Adrian Tchaikovsky book…
We have mentioned it before, but you may have noticed quite a few books from Adrian on the bookshop shelves lately. He’s always had a steady release schedule, but I make it that there’s at least five in 2025 alone. (I’ve reviewed Shroud, Spiderlight, and Alien Clay all in the last year or so.)
As we reach the end of 2025, here’s another dinky release to add to the pile – a 200-ish page novella and short story in hardback that evokes nursery stories, little people and all those Pinocchio-like puppetry things.
A trickster thief, forced to take on a heist job by a local gangster is not a particularly original plot, admittedly – even when it involves magic and homunculi (that’s living puppets, to the uninitiated.)
But this is Adrian Tchaikovsky we’re looking at – an author who has been known to take easily identifiable tropes and make them into something more original.
And so it is here. The story focusses upon Coppelia (a nice nod to E T A Hoffman’s story The Sandman perhaps) who lives in Fountains Parish. This is an area that is part of the Barrions, an area run by gang-lords who take advantage of the people there to steal from the rich half-mages who live in the magical city of Loretz.
Coppelia is given an offer she can’t refuse by her mentor, Auntie Countless, who wants her to use her specific skills to collect a potentially valuable magic artifact that seems long forgotten in the cellar of a castle. This is something that local gang leader Gaston Ferrulio demands, thinking that he could use the artifact for his own good.
In true heist-style, a gang is got together to do the deed, as they say. Along with Coppelia are two miniature homunculi – a wooden female named Tef and a metal-made warrior named Arc. Of course, it goes wrong, and the consequences of this make up the rest of the novella.
Although the book is novella-sized, as is usual Adrian manages to squeeze in a few nice little details as the plot evolves of Coppelia’s world and the people around her.
I imagined it to be very much akin to Guillermo del Toro’s film Pinocchio (2022) in terms of style and setting, all wood, gears and gas lamps (even when one of the homunculi has a touch of the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz.) The prose is so good that I kept feeling that the book written by someone else would have been bigger, because of all the elements that Adrian briefly mentions along the way.
Characterisation is a particular strength of Adrian’s, I think; and so I was pleased to find that, despite the brevity of the novella, it was up to standard, with characters whose depth belie the brevity of the book. Coppelia, for example, is as you’d expect – feisty, sparky, good in a fight, quick-witted, someone who knows when to make a stand and when to run, a witty riposte never far away from her mouth.
The homunculi, mainly represented by the wooden Tef and the metal Arc, have a bantering style reminiscent to me of Mary Norton’s The Borrowers, Terry Pratchett’s Wee Free Men, or perhaps even the dwarfs in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits. They are, despite their miniature size, remarkably adult in their tone and manner, as they should be having existed for a long while before coming to the magical city of Loretz.
With all of this mechanical wizardry, magic potions and inanimate objects brought to life, you might even be thinking ‘Pantomime!’, especially at this time of year (the Nutcracker Suite, etc.) But really, there’s nothing Pantomime-ish about this story. Whilst some reviews refer to the book as whimsical, I think that it’s quite a dark tale, more of a steampunk fantasy with a slightly magical touch. It’s definitely less cosy than say Travis Baldree’s recent Legends & Lattes series, although it lures the reader in by using similar tropes. (It might also be worth pointing out that Adrian’s story was first published three years before Travis’s books.)
But it’s fast-paced and even fun at times, with quite a lot of humour as we go along. Most of all the story has something to say of friendship and loyalty, even when other ethics are… well, less important.
The addition of the short story Precious Little Things (also published originally in 2019) makes a nice little counterpoint, as a prequel set in the same world that explains the origins of the group of homunculi that Arc and Tef are part of. It’s not essential but it builds on some of the ideas mentioned in the novella.
In summary, Made Things shows us again that Adrian writes fantasy as well as he does science fiction. It’s a good story that, as Adrian often does, plays with fantasy tropes that make you think, but doesn’t outstay its welcome.
Whilst it’s darker and more visceral moments may make you wince, in the end its charm may give you a warm fuzzy glow, which is all the more welcome in Winter (which it is here, as I type this.) It would be a nice introduction to someone wanting to try Adrian’s fantasy work but not quite sure where to start, not to mention, of course, that it would make a nice little Christmas stocking-filler! (Dare I say it? “It’s a cracker!!” *grin* )
© 2025 Mark Yon
Hardback | Tor / PanMacmillan
MADE THINGS by Adrian Tchaikovsky
December 2025 | 212 pages
Made Things and Precious Little Things were first published in 2019 by Tor.
ISBN: 978-1035071692
