Children of Time

This is the 1st Tchaikovsky book I have read and I got to admit I am impressed. I have been wanting to read alot more scifi and very happy I picked this one up

This book takes place over period of several hundred yrs. Filled with the last remenant of humanity searching desperatley for a new home in the depths of space, alien monsters, ancient protective sattelites and mad scientists

Trying not to put any spoilers here but the ideas and concepts explored in this book are honestly quite facinating to read about and explore. What would highly evolved different type of life look like, how would they evolve and what would happen when they come in contact us.

How would a generation ship society evolve over hundreds of yrs, and growing factions and differing ideas on what needs to be done to survive knowing nothing is left but those who have been borned, lived and died in space.

My favorite Character would have to be Portia. Following her story of overcoming the challenges facing her people in their fight for survival I found myself anxious to get back to Portia's story. But honeslty everyones story line kept me hooked through the whole book.

The imagination of Tchaikovsky envisioning what the world would look like through the eyes of alien life but also in ways similar to life we find on earth was, imho, one of the best methods of story telling I have come across in scifi in a long time. Read the book and I hope you will understand.

This was and is I think one of my favorite reads of this yr and I know I will likely go back and re-read at some point in the future.

Spider gender politics for the win baby!

Love the book. I havent read much sci-fi so I dont have much to compare it. That aside, its well written, beautiful concept and pulled me into it right off the bat. The pacing around the end of was a bit weird tho. Can't wait to read the next

I confess I couldn't care less about the humans in this story or their struggles, but I never thought I'd ever care so much about spiders.

I don't read about the books prior to reading them, in this case I wish I had. I don't like spiders, granted now I may look at them differently. Book was great, the end was meh

What a super interesting sci-fi. This book had a lot of twists and turns I did not expect, yet almost every character introduced in this book was likable. I would highly recommend this book if you are looking for something of a twist on space science fiction!

One of the most interesting sci fi books I've read in a while, with a novel and intriguing premise.
Recommended.

“Children Of Time” by Adrian Tchaikovsky, recipient of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction of the year in 2016, is the best new science fiction novel I have read in many years.

I enjoyed this book the way that everything started developing and all the progress seen on the spiders was something really cool though I have to say that the humans weren't as interesting as the spiders on the spider side you saw rebellions, revolutions the rising of a new society the sexism and a lot of amazing stuff while the humans were doing nothing as cool everytime I was brought to the human side I was reading as fast as I could to keep expanding on the spiders but however I think this book is truly good and I bet that on the next one with the events last seen will be really awesome

It has an interesting concept. And I do like what's going on with each of the storylines, I just don't like the way the chapters are divided. Every time I'm getting used to the current perspective, the chapter ends and I have to do it all over again with the next pov. It just takes me out of the story constantly. So I'm gonna take a little break from this and come back to it some other time. 

The setup was interesting enough. Building that was enough for a while. But after that was established, there's not much character development going on here. The sentient spiders on the new world are more interesting than the humans. Lots of conflict & fighting with both the humans and the spiders. Started wondering if this was worth sticking with at 20%, gave up at 33%.

This is absolutely one of my favorite scifi books. The intricate detail put into the evolution of the spiders (among others) is wild and makes for such an interesting read.

Children of Time – 5 stars

Imaginative, original, weird, ambitious—this book is all of that and more. It's not the easiest story to follow, but the payoff is absolutely worth it. A truly impressive piece of speculative fiction. I’m very curious to see where the story goes in the next installments.

Children of Time has a fascinating premise and some truly intriguing moments, especially the evolution of the civilization. But overall, the pacing felt too slow for me. The good parts didn't last long enough to keep me fully engaged. Great ideas — just not as gripping as I hoped.

TL;DR

I very much enjoyed reading this book. Great concept and it was well written. I would definitely recommend it. Though when you hear people say this is a first contact story I don't agree with it since the only time the two civilizations meet is at the end of the book (they do have a brief interaction around the middle part of the story but point still stands)

My Scoring System

I have five things I look for in a book, if the book checks all five it's a 5/5 stars book, if it checks none it's a 1/5 stars and everything else is a combination:

✓ - Main Story: The are two stories going on at the same time, one from the humans side and the other from a different species. I would consider the other species story as the main one since I like it far more than the human ones. I was really nice seeing them grow and

X - Side Stories (if it applies): The humans story was boring, I didn't like it and was trying to get though it as fast as I could to get back to the other species. The only time I was interested was when the humans interacted with Doctor Avrana Kern. When they were talking between them and solving problems with their ship I was tuned out.

✓ - Characters: The human characters were pretty boring in my opinion. I didn't care much for them at all. The other species steal the show by far. Portia, Bianca and Fabian were the stars. I loved all three of them, seeing them starting as "cavemen" and over the generations growing into more complex characters and how different they become compared to their ancestors. Every chapter that involved them were great and fun to read. Great written characters.

✓ - Setting/Ambiance: The human ship is just a hunk of metal, nothing to say about that. The green planet of the other species was interesting and it was interesting to see how they built upon it and created their settlements and cities. Later on the humans visit a different planet that also was pretty interesting to imagine how it would have looked based on it's description.

✓ - Ending: I was nice to see the two species interact with each other even if it was just a brief moment at the end of the book. The ending wasn't bad but nothing amazing. It sets up the next book and I think I will keep reading this series to see where it goes.

Extensive Review

Nothing much to say here, great book for the most part. The human story didn't connect with me. Reading the story of the other species was amazing, I didn't think I was going to enjoy it as much as I did, it was really a great surprise.

Facinating speculative science based musings on a spacebound humanity adapting against insurmountable odds in the far and cold reaches of space (yet much less cliched than that soundbite).

Wow, wow, wow.
An incredible read that I simply couldn't put down, Children of Time stretched my imagination in fantastic ways. Filled with accessible prose that still felt fresh and fascinating, the world-building alone made this book worth the price of admission. Adding to that though, twists and turns of the story itself along with the heartfelt—and unexpectedly relatable—characters truly elevated this book to top tier for me. Not to mention that although it touched on some wildly ambitious themes such as humanity, the inescapable passage of time, messiahs, AI, and the concept of sentience, it did so with such grace that it never came across as pretentious or haughty.
I will be highly recommending this book to anybody and everybody who can appreciate a good sci-fi.

Lots of interesting ideas without getting bogged down or feeling difficult to read. Everything feels woven into a plot that moves relatively quickly.
I especially liked the creative depictions of “alien” technology. It felt believably different and something I hadn't seen before.
I didn't mind the frequent reuse of character names. Sometimes it made it hard to keep track of how much time has passed, but it was nice not to spend time “getting to know” each new character, if they're only going to be around for a couple chapters. Just a “This Bianca was a scientist” and we move on with the story. Refreshing.
I will say that the switch in perspective every chapter drove me up a wall, but that probably just means I was very invested in the story.

Fascinating, fun, thrilling, full of pathos and empathy. Tchaikovsky is somehow able to make the alien familiar. A delightful journey full of memorable characters and meaningful moments both big and small. Can’t wait to read the rest of the series!

Overall, I think the book was a really enjoyable read. It was interesting to see how the spiders developed along a completely different tech tree compared to humankind.

I see a lot of reviews that the characters were flat, and they weren't given enough time for development due to the time-skip nature of the book. I can definitely see where that feeling comes from, however I don't feel that it detracted from the experience. This book is not about the individuals themselves, but about the growth and development of two species.

In this way, the main characters are the spider species and the human species at large, rather than the various Portias/Biancas/etc. Through this lens, we can appreciate a more complex and satisfying arc as we watch how the two (de?)-evolve over time.

Touches on a lot of social issues in a way that I wasn't expecting. When I started, I was just looking for a fun, sci-fi read with cool space aliens, but Tchaikovsky fits in a lot of themes that made me pause for personal reflection.

-1/2 star for the ending. I think the conclusion was nice and the epilogue leaves me hopeful for the next book, but the pacing of the ending was quite rushed and so I didn't feel like it had the space for a satisfying climax.

My first read from Tchaikovsky and one that has cemented him as one of my new favourite authors. A fantastic entry into the SciFi genre for people who primarily stick to Fantasy. The systems are not overly explained, but it still contains some philosophical questions on what it is to be human.

The story centres around humanity and our quest to terraform other planets to make them hospitable to human life. In this particular case however, spiders have evolved to be the dominant species, not any kind of mammal or specifically ape that we were expecting.

The spiders however progress through the stages of development, even though it goes in slightly different stages to ours, and eventually are capable of space exploration. By this time however, the last surviving vestiges of humanity are desperate to land no matter the cost, and must face the spiders head-on.

The situation can be summed up as the Prisoners Dilemma, and the characters even discuss as much. But when the stakes are so high, there is only one inevitable outcome. Though the results of that outcome were very unexpected.

It should be noted, that for people who want 'strong independent women' characters, Isa Lain is that woman. She loved, she lost, she faced Gods and monsters, she sacrificed everything for the survival of humanity. This is the 'strong woman' we need to see more of in media, and it strikes me that Tchaikovsky is good at writing women because he treats us like people.

I look forward not only to reading the rest of this series, but the rest of his works, and have already pre-ordered his next book. (Shroud)

I think it was mostly the writing style that bothered me. It's hard to pinpoint exactly but it felt like a lot of the author stepping back from the story and saying “and this happened because reason but of course Character A doesn't know this” instead of explaining things through the narrative/characters. 

It felt like some things just happened without any explanation or reason simply to advance the plot (or make up for the lack of plot).

I understand that sci-fi requires a certain suspension of disbelief but some things were just too silly. Like ant computers—come on!?

This was so dry and boring for the most part. I could not connect or care about the non-human characters or their biology and evolution. I also found weird that their society evolved so similarly to human society in so many ways. I don’t think I’ll continue with the series.

Very fun read! Wonderful exploration into theoretical evolution and I thought the differences in perspective of spiders vs humans was fascinating. Wish it had been explored more but overall very good book.

So fun and it offers such a different and new perspective on science fiction, at least that I had read so far. I really enjoyed it.

The spiders were so interesting to read, definitely my favorite parts of the book. Having the presence of the humans gives a good contrast and for me it put things into perspective about how different the world views of these two can be. Pretty smart.

I enjoyed it greatly.

OH WHAT AN ENDING!!!!!! Empathy conquers all made me tear up ngl. Full review in the morning!!!

Morning after edit:
The best possible ending was achieved beyond my imagination in a sardonically hilarious way.

I am a character driven reader, more than plot more than themes, so it took me a while to get through this 600-pager where I barely connected with any of the characters but it was all so worth it for that ending.

Inventive, smart, and so full of grace for these flawed sentient monkeys (and spiders). Approach with patience and you will be rewarded greatly.

Oh I'm never getting over that ending, I love it so much.