Author James Lovegrove described it as "superior stuff, tackling big themes – gods, messiahs, artificial intelligence, alienness – with brio".

[8] He was employed as a legal executive for the Commercial Dispute Department of Blacks, Solicitors, of Leeds[9] until late 2018 when he became a full-time writer.

In the early 2000, he won Xenos's annual competition with the short story The Roar of the Crowd, only for the magazine to fold pre-publication.

[20] Tchaikovsky has regularly expressed his intention regarding the Shadows of the Apt series not to make science better than magic,[21] or vice versa: "This is another key element, really: the magic/tech divide is a concept that turns up here and there in fantasy, but usually one side is good (mostly magic) and the other (dirty polluting tech) is bad.

With the world of the kinden, they’re basically both as bad as the people who use them, whether it’s blood sacrifice in a Mantis-kinden grove or the Wasp Empire’s city-levelling weaponry.

[27] Tchaikovsky has received the following literary awards and nominations: Shadows of the Apt Main novels Tales of the Apt (short story collections in the Apt universe) Children of Time Echoes of the Fall Bioforms The Tyrant Philosophers The Final Architecture Standalone novels After the War Warhammer 40,000 Tchaikovsky's first Warhammer 40,000 novel Day of Ascension (2022), like his short story "Raised in Darkness" from Inferno!