Children of Time

This book has been sitting on my shelf for ages and I am so glad that I bumped it up in the reading order. I don't think I've ever read such a compelling introduction to a book; the first third of this book is solid gold. I love the premise: the dying embers of a forgotten earth making their way to a long promised Eden in their jury-rigged colony ship, earth's last hope, the Gilgamesh-only to find their Eden swarming with intelligent spiders and an insane AI construct babbling about its precious monkeys.

I find it hard to review books that I really enjoyed because I'm tempted summarize the whole thing. I will try to limit myself in saying that this is a fantastic space opera-hot house/dying earth-apocalypse story. It's a story that concerns itself with humanity as a construct, our hubris, and our place in the cosmos; more than anything this is a story of survival. Premise aside the real draw here is the writing, the prose is immaculate, and there is a quiet tension that builds to a terrifying crescendo as the story accelerates through the centuries. There is a very dry and sardonic humor which pervades the entire story that is most noticeable whenever Doctor Kerns is on the scene; the mad AI screams and the constant monkey-this-and-monkey-that were as hilarious as they were spine chilling (this was extremely well done in the audiobook).

I had a few gripes as the story transitioned out of its first act; personally I didn't agree with the direction the plot takes and some of the decisions made by the characters didn't align with what I would have chosen to do- but I don't think that's a knock against the quality of the book or the writing. What did bother me was that it seemed like these alternative courses of action were something a proofer asked after, and instead of accommodating them in the dialogue, we got a line or two of throw-away exposition to explain that choice away. The only major complaint I had was that the pacing isn't perfect and the middle section does drag as the crew of the Gilgamesh has their story backfilled. That means the crew sections of the story are dragging down the evolutionary world building but I think it's more than a fair trade.

TL;DR: Probably the best first act of anything I've read lately. A little slow in the middle but generally a fantastic read. Arachnophobes should probably pass on this series.