Children of Ruin

The alien development in Children of Ruin wasn't quite as good as the Portid chapters of "Children of Time", but the overall pacing of the book was much better with no boring human chapters to break up the palp-quivering goodness of the Portid and Cephalopod chapters. The ending of the book, despite sharing a similar flavor to the first book, still hits just as hard. These-of-We are looking forward to going on another adventure with the third book.

The way Tchaikovsky brings total alien intelligence to life is just spellbinding.

What a great book. In my last update, I mentioned not being surprised about where the story was at that point, but almost immediately after writing that the story took a wild turn that I didn't see coming at all. The last half of the book took so many twists and turns, making for some very exciting reading. The past couple of days I had a hard time using my free time for anything other than reading this book, it was that captivating.

Children of Ruin builds off its predecessor, Children of Time, and takes the saga to new heights. I can't wait to dive into the final book of the series, Children of Memory, and see how it all wraps up.

Another brilliant exploration of other minds with even more high stakes.

Join in and read it, we’re going on an adventure!

(That phrase will give you chills)

It's not an idle read, but the concepts are intriguing and there is plenty of humour in the writing. A worthy successor to Children of Time

Decent read! Unexpectedly enjoyed having previously read one of the author's reference books (if you have gotten into Children of Ruin you might be able to guess which topic it concerns :) Less bombastic storyline than Children of Time, a larger focus on cognition in general

we came thirty-one light years from Earth to terraform planets and chew gum, and we’re all out of gum. Actually, there was gum, or at least the means to manufacture it, but that wasn’t the point.

Although there are some cool ideas in this book (viral alien lifeforms, evolved squids and the flow of time) the writing felt rather dull. It never really took up pace and it got nowhere near the awesomeness of the first book.

Does not have the rhythm of the first book, explores memory and simulation more with some good story threads but fell short for me.

2022 Dec:
I had forgotten that the epilogue of this book already contained corvids in what was basically a teaser for the next book.
I think upon second reading feels more soft-sci-fi than first, but really cool and with all kinds of things I love still.
2020 Feb:
The draw in these books for me are the "others", and they are done so credibly well! There's some tension and some solution which is less interesting than the idea of how differently intelligence might work. I love these books.

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