Elder Race (Elder Race #1), by Adrian Tchaikovsky

While I enjoyed the Adrian Tchaikovsky novels and series I've read, I think I like this kind of novellas the most. In Elder Race we get a deconstruction of royalty asking help from the powerful wizard against a demonic threat trope. But in fact, this is one of the human diaspora colonies and there is no magic, only science and people who have forgotten it, yet the focus is on the internal perspectives of the characters and how they look at the same event from completely different places. I was a little surprised to see that this is part of a series. It felt standalone and, if anything, it should have been considered part of the general universe of the forgotten human colonies (Children of Time) rather than a separate Elder Race series. Anyway, I don't think that it required a continuation. As it is, we see the wizard who is actually an observer from the second wave of human expansion being beseeched by the local princess (of a culture regressed from the first wave) against evil…