Children of Time

This was really interesting but also really dense, long and complex. There are things I loved, like the ending/twist, the science and some creepy scenes. There are also things i didn't love, like the majority of the human storyline, the huge amount of time passing in the story and the social commentary on gender and matriarchy/patriarchy fell flat - for me. But nonetheless this was absolutely fascinating about 90% of the time.

**Hook:** Wall-E meets Starship Troopers, not exactly! **Plot Summary** Humans seeking a new home to live on, run against a terraformed earth like planet being protected by Dr. Kern and her satellite, a thousands of year old relic of the mighty, multiplanetary human empire. The spiders on the planet have evolved into much more by Dr. Kern's nano-virus experiment originally intended for monkeys. **Praise:** Very original tale out of cliché Sci-Fi tropes like destroyed planet and giant spiders. Loved the way author managed to this. Strong character development for certain characters. Amazing twist, makes me anticipate the next book. **Critique:** Motivation for certain characters is not justified. Destruction of the human empire is quite not believable and could have been explored and justified a bit more. Story emphasizes the view point of a certain character too much the pay off is not there or the character is really dull. **Recommendation:** Highly recommended! **Your Rating:** ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

What a creative story and what terrible execution

This story is a masterpiece. The creativity to have another species, albeit a known one, evolve to rival humans is fantastic. But. The story lacks any kind of tension. The writing style of the spiders (they switch each chapter) is an absolute slog and i literally have taken the chapter of the spiders as a punishment for one of the humans. It is so creative and yet it dies within the poor story telling. To be honest i dont know if i can handle another 600 page slog like this but am interested how this evolves in the next book.

dnf Got horrible nightmares from the chapters with the giant jumping spiders ... could not read on :(

Wow. Very fine piece of sci-fi.

Outstanding! I loved this book, such an amazing story. The themes explored in this book are so well communicated. You see a whole society being born and evolve, becoming more advanced both technologically, but spiritually and emotionally as well. The struggles the spiders go through are eerily similar to our own hurdles throughout history. I especially liked the gender dynamics between the more physically strong females and the small male spiders, that had to fight for their right to live. Religion and god-complexes played a big role during the society's formative years and drove a wedge between different factions, which was frustrating but realistic and fascinating to read about. I found myself rooting more for the spiders than the humans sometimes, which is quite the feat Tchaikovsky achieved, considering most people's revulsion or fear for spiders. The journey of the humans is heartbreaking and thrilling to read. Following the historian and the rest of the crew trying desperately to hold the ship together, prevent mutinies, fight power-hungry individuals from gaining control, and of course racing against time to make all this happen - over generations no less - had me glued to the pages. Their yearning for a planet to call home and finally end their perpetual drifting in space really helped make them sympathetic to the reader, even while getting attached to the new inhabitants of the planet that the humans want to take over. I'm definitely gonna check out Tchaikovsky's fantasy series now and hope it's at least half as good as this book.

A novel idea which kept me going through the whole book: the development of a whole new (alien-like sentiment giant spider) species is shown in single scene-like episodes, where the same character names are used for the same archetypes of figures, who lived in different times. Portia is the warrior/strategist, Bianca the priest/scientist, Fabian the subservient male, etc. In the same way, important points in history are shown in a second main parallel narrative thread of a human spaceship where the main narrator, one of the Last of humankind's historians, is woken up from hypersleep every few generations to help making important decisions. Another secondary strand depicting an AI is introduced. Theres detailed (and interesting!) evolutionary explanations in this novel dubbed as "hard" sci-fi as well as the exploration of women's rights in the alien species, just the other way round: the genders roles are switched and males have to fight for their rights. Nevertheless, the whole novel and its characters felt distant to me, as their alienated way of living one for short periods every few hundred / thousand years just makes them broken or badly depicted. The whole way of showing action-loaded scenes from history felt not really boring, but somehow faked and not intuitive. Also the necessary exposition in the beginning as well as in between the action is very large. The parts have been narrated from the respective character viewpoints and are also told in an interesting fashion - because it's fun to delve into how things have developed over time - but still it's just 90% tell and 10% show, and if I wasn't such a nerd I wouldn't have made it though the book. 3 stars for keeping my interest with cool ideas throughout the story, but certainly not more as I found the characters weak, the crafty side of things weak, and also the ending to be highly unsatisfying.