Children of Time

The book is mostly split between an “alien” point of view and a human POV. I was much more interested and entertained by the alien perspective and development. A very unique basis for a story. 

In this story, the future is particularly depressing and hopeless. The peoples of earth have begun colonizing other moons and planets with the help of science fiction ‘inventions' of cryogenics and some limited terraforming. Human tensions escalate beyond belief and earth is basically destroyed before any of the colonies are self-supporting. At the same time that war is begun, we are introduced to an implausible ‘nano-virus' that becomes the crucial sci-fi element of the book.

uh hi i'd like one vernor vinge please.

This was a delightful surprise: I picked it up because it sounded like a SF I could manage (I'm trying to up my SF reading this year), and instead I found a novel detailing the emergence of a society and a culture with a historian as protagonist.

You know I'm all about history and religion in my SFF.

I absolutely loved my time with Portia and Bianca and Fabian, and although the deus ex machina of the conclusion bugged a little, it was absolutely set up and believable in the context of the story.

Wow, this is the best book I've read all year (and I've read over 40 of them!) Definitely recommend reading it if you're into sci-fi.

If you haven't googled/seen a summary already - don't - I think this book is even better with that element of surprise.

The plot of this book is a short story and it would have been much more successful in that form. As a novel it is cumbersome and inelegant. Appreciated the imagination of the author in telling the story of an intelligent species quite different to humans. Appreciated the wrap up of the plot. I would rate 3.5 stars if I could but it's definitely not 4 so settled for 3.

This was a great, if slow, read! I suppose that's fitting for a story that takes place over thousands of years and many generations. Other reviews of this basically said, “i can't believe I needed up rooting for the faint spiders!”” And yeah, I feel the same way. A really unique book.

This was a pretty fantastic concept book, but I struggled with the level of detail given to the development of the cultures in this story. I generally have no problem with big detailed books, but multiple times I found myself wondering why I was supposed to care about, for example, the gender politics of giant spiders. Yes, there are parallels to our society, yes, it was a very good thought experiment, and yes, it all came together in a way that made most of the seemingly unnecessary details necessary, but it caused the story to drag and feel drawn out in my opinion.
The same could be said for the human component of the book. I was a bit more connected to them, compared with the spiders because the characters were consistent. Also, it was fun to always be “woken up” in the same ship only to find out a whole new culture and world had developed. Even with them though, I found half the chapters to be kind of irrelevant.
When the book was over, I thought it was a cool way to bring an original story together, and very clever through and through, but the journey of reading this book was a little trying, and I actually switched from reading to listening so that I could just power-listen through the chapters I didn't care about. I found myself waiting impatiently for more to happen, and when stuff finally did happen, it was all at the end and shockingly sudden. I wanted to know how the two civilizations meshed, and that ended up being just one chapter, which disappointed me a little.
So good story, cool idea, but not what I hoped, and I feel that the hype around this book is somewhat misplaced.

Interesting, well written and some nice ideas, but for me, wow, a long read that seemingly never ended.

What if, instead of monekys evolving, another creature evolved to reach our levels of self awareness? What if that creature were spiders? Well, this book will give you a good run for your money.

Split, mostly, between a new civilization of sentient spiders and a space ark containing (what we presume) the last cargo of earthlings, the story tells itself over centuries, if not millennia (it's not really clear - just enough time for spiders to become astronauts!).

On one side the story looks at an evolving species and dips in and out of time to see how they're getting on, how science evolves, how society evolves and most interestingly, struggles to break free of their DNA wiring.

On the other side, floating away in space a space ark ship, run by “key crew” and carrying a cargo of the last dollop of humanity. Space sleep, stasis, what have you, is used to let the characters jump over centuries of time, and start to slip out of sync of eachother's ages.

The responsibility of carry the last of humanity and even the sheer amount of time on a ship that was perhaps designed for shipping and not generations of the living are examined, and this is certainly interesting.

The book, at 600 odd pages though, for me, took me a long, long time to get through. 2 months in fact. I found it really hard to feel any kind of connection with the spider society and evolution which probably dragged my reading along.

I loved Dogs of War by the same author, and I legally remember it being quite epic. But with this book, it was beyond epic and around the 60% mark I was just wanting it to end.

The end of the book does close off with some really nice and aspirational ideas, but for me, this just too long to get to and fell short of what felt like work to finish the book.

Recommended if you like your space operas. Possibly pass if you're unsure. I'm not sure I'll be quick to pick up another book that spans an epic time period for a while!

“Pocas cosas concentran la mente colectiva más decisivamente que la amenaza de la completa extinción.”

Después de Tau Cero de Anderson parece que este año me voy por las lecturas de naves generacionales, ¿eh? Y eso que estuve a punto de empezar Médula de Robert Reed pero me desanimaron algunas opiniones.

Estas arañitas súper desarrolladas no son tan aterradoras como las de Heinlein o Steakley pero uno les llega a tener tanto cariño y respeto que por momentos te sientes tentado a darle la espalda a la humanidad y su desesperado intento por sobrevivir. La única conclusión a la que llego para no haberle dado la puntuación máxima es que le faltó un poco de pew-pew y le sobró algo de historia evolutiva arácnida. Por lo demás, ha sido casi perfecta. Vaya, que ese final no me lo esperaba y aunque por mucho que te deje el sabor de una novela autoconclusiva (o casi), no veo las horas de poner Children of Ruin en mis manos.

Hasta ahora, y despues de leer su novela corta Walking to Aldebaran, todo indica que Tchaikovsky es un autor brillante que promete buenas páginas y worldbuildings impresionantes.

[Audiobook]
3.4 stars

Super interesting premise. Was absolutely hooked for the first & last 30%. Middle felt dragged.

It looks like I'm one of the few that couldn't connect with this at all. I enjoyed the beginning, but as it progressed I lost more and more interest, especially when it came time to tell the story from the perspective of the insects.

Very interesting first book I've read by this author, and well worth the read.

Humanity is warring against itself at home while it destroys earth. A faction sends out probes and then terraforming teams to the most promising systems they've found. Headed by Dr. Avrana Kern, the terraforming team arrives at a promising planet which has had early terraforming processes when another faction of idealists set against the idea of terraforming and spreading humanity attacks her group. Ultimately, Dr. Kern is the only surviving member of the expedition, other than the AI of her ship. She is driven to complete her mission, and decides to encode her brain in the ship's computer to ensure she can complete it. Utilizing the cold-sleep facilities, she then directs the AIs in trying to terraform this planet.

The key plan was to utilize a bespoke designed virus customized to uplift mammals into a society, and this virus has been working on the planet for the millenia since the initial terraformers arrived. The virus has unintended side-effects and much of the story is told from the perspective of a race of spiders as they develop from warring beasts to intelligent individuals and then into a full-fledged advanced society.

Just in time to deal with a colony ship sent from a dying earth, containing what is felt to be the last surviving humans.

repetitive & boring

Was re-reading it for the Virtual Book Club and somehow this time my arachnophobia didn't get in the way, so I enjoyed the story much more this time round.
Still 4 stars though, because... Can't really put it into words. Just don't feel it to be a 5.
Will definitely continue with the trilogy now that it's completely out. How much do I want to know what shenanigans Helena and Portia are getting themselves into? Yes.

600 pages :) And I looked forward to the next page.

I was a bit worried when I started reading this book thinking about the spiders and bringing my memories back when I read A Fire Upon the Deep and all the stuff with the Thines because that was the only thing I was bored a bit in AFUtD. Well I was surprised by how interested I was on the spiders and their world. I did not like the end but It was a great read.

Executive Summary: This book started out pretty strong and started to lose me towards the end before sticking the landing. I can see why so many of my friends have rated it 5 stars, but it fell a bit short of that for me.

Audiobook: Mel Hudson does a fine job with the audio. I'm most of the way through my next book and I don't really remember their performance much in a good or bad way. I can't recall if they did anything extra, but audio is a decent option.

Full Review
I've heard mention of this book over the years as really good, but for whatever reason I never went out of my way to pick it up until it was on sale recently. I had no idea it was about genetically engineered spiders, so maybe I should have read the description/some reviews first?

I did about half of this book in a single sitting due to a 7+ hour car ride. I was really engaged early on/for the entire trip, but started to lose steam after I got home and back to my normal audio routine. In particular I found myself less interested in the spider parts than I was earlier on.

While the human story deals mostly with the same few characters and a variety of extras, the spider story has mostly different characters for each part. The author re-used a handful of names and for the most part those spiders kept the same characteristics as previous ones, but there were times when I found some of them more or less likeable than previous incarnations.

In general I found myself rooting for the spiders than the humans, which I think is the main commentary of this book. People are awful to each other. We always have been, and most days it feels like we always will be. Even when we're facing a crisis, some people care more about their own place than the good of the group.

I'm not sure what spider society would be like if they had the level of intelligence portrayed in this book, but I feel like Mr. Tchaikovsky did a good job with it. They felt very spider-like throughout yet relatable most of the time as well.

I thought the ending was really good and wrapped things up pretty nicely after part of the story where I was starting to become increasingly distracted while listening.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and I'm glad I finally got to it, even if I didn't seem to like it quite as much as my friend did.

Amazing sci-fi in it's true meaning (at least how I understand it) - it's not only about space travel, about postapocalyptic survival, about strange new beasts and societies... it's about possibilities, about meaning behind power, about creating and destroying civilizations, about what we could learn from strange ideas captured in this fascinating genre of science fiction.

I found this book hard going at first but it got better the further I read.

• Some interesting sci-fi ideas.
  - Dragged on a lot in the middle of the book. Plot isn't very compelling.
  - Too many characters that were not really individuated. All of them sort of blended together. Doesn't help that multiple characters have the same name. I didn't really find myself caring what happened to any of them.
  - Seems unrealistic that alien spiders would behave extremely similarly to humans. They didn't really feel ‘alien' at all.

Fantastic!

mi-e foarte greu să notez acest roman.
Ca valoare scriitoricească, Tchaikovsky scrie chiar prost, de la personaje la talent. Ca originalitate, este o clonă completă a Furnicilor de Weber, dar și a altor SF-uri.
Ca entertainment însă, e de 4,5/5 - chiar am citit-o cu plăcere vinovată, simțindu-mă din nou ca la 15 ani când citeam Furnicile (și cam acolo e și nivelul ei maxim), pentru că este captivantă (la nivel de pulp).
În rezumat, dacă v-au plăcut cărțile lui Weber și puteți trece peste faptul că (bio)tehnica din ”CT” este evident nefuncțională (ceea ce autorul nu pare să conștientizeze deși biopunk-ul său e oricum foarte lejer, deloc hard sf), go for it: it's entertaining.
recenzie pe larg: https://bloguldesefe.ro/2021/01/24/copiii-timpului-de-adrian-tchaikovsky/

One of the best books I've ever read. When it comes to science fiction, there's a lot of the same out there. Tchaikovsky writes an entirely original story with amazing characters - not all human.

The premise is this: Earth is in the process of terraforming a new planet to make it habitable. The plan is to contaminate this new world with a genetic virus that will cause the monkies there to become more sentient in the far future. Something goes wrong (we're still in chapter 1 here) and instead a planet of insects are grown.

The most impressive part of this entire story is the focus on insect chemistry and what it would look like for a planet of intelligent spiders to rise. They face many of the same issues we do in our society today - gender rights (although the main issue is to allow males to NOT be eaten after mating), societal structures, trust, communication and math. The approach to solving these issues is entirely insect based, and some of them blew my mind.

One of the best books I've ever read. When it comes to science fiction, there's a lot of the same out there. Tchaikovsky writes an entirely original story with amazing characters - not all human.

The premise is this: Earth is in the process of terraforming a new planet to make it habitable. The plan is to contaminate this new world with a genetic virus that will cause the monkies there to become more sentient in the far future. Something goes wrong (we're still in chapter 1 here) and instead a planet of insects are grown.

The most impressive part of this entire story is the focus on insect chemistry and what it would look like for a planet of intelligent spiders to rise. They face many of the same issues we do in our society today - gender rights (although the main issue is to allow males to NOT be eaten after mating), societal structures, trust, communication and math. The approach to solving these issues is entirely insect based, and some of them blew my mind.