Children of Time

The plot of this novel is broken down into two segments, the evolving species and the humans. I found myself very bored with the human subplot and, in the end, feel like it didn't contribute much to the larger narrative and themes. I found myself wanting to skip those chapters to read about the species, which caused weird narrative flows, and I feel like that whole subplot could be boiled down to a chapter or two without losing much

Altså, jeg har alltid syntes edderkopper er skikkelig kule, men skulle du ha sett, Adrian Tchaikovsky klarte å gjøre meg enda gladere i dem.

En nydelig fortelling om menneskeheten, på godt og vondt.

Po Kleci dusi od stejnyho autora sem cekal mistama slozitejsi pasaze. Celkem originalni knizka, kdy se jeden experiment trosku vymkl a zbytky lidstva se s tim experimentem o par tisic let opet potkaji. Mozna castecne i sonda lidstvi (ne zrovna pozitivni).

Zaokrouhlime nahoru na 4 hvezdy.

... read A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge 😀

Actually, I think this book is more widely regarded and probably correctly at that. But I think I personally prefer Vinge's book. I guess my real recommendation is to read both.

I think its a nice example of how the genre has grown in the last 20 years. Tchaikovvsky's book has more nuanced characters, and the book moves away from some of the genre breeziness I expect. Its still "hard sci-fi", you couldn't change the cover and get it shelved on the Literary Fiction table.

I initially bounced of the book because it opens with Kern, an obvious Musk stand-in, and I didn't really want to deal, in 2023, with either a glowing great man capitalist protagonist or not very subtile criticism. But it was much more deft then I was planning to give it credit for.

An immensely satisfying story about human advancement and hubris that gave me everything I'm looking for in good sci fi. It's an exciting story filled with twists and turns that touches on deep, familiar ideas in profound and novel ways. There's lots to think about, characters to care about, and story lines to look forward to. The kind of book that gets me looking into the rest of the author's catalog.

I enjoyed this one a lot. The ending left a little bit more to be desired, but overall it was a great read.

Incredible! "The smartest evolutionary world-building you'll ever read", indeed! I was not expecting that wonderful ending. I was bracing myself for an ending I would not like, but I was wrong!

I can't wait to start the second book.

DNF at 3% Jan 20, 2022

Amazing. I found the civilization on the terraformed planet to be completely fascinating. I haven’t read or watched a lot of sci-fi, but I remember stories where the humans were the heroes and had to fight alien invaders that would come and try to annihilate them. In this novel it’s pretty much the opposite: the humans are the invaders, and I was rooting for the "other" civilization. The end was also very satisfyingly: somehow surprising, yet consistent with what happened before.

Very clever use of time to unsettle us with an other and alien confrontation. The two threads of story are well-balanced and subtly contorted my sympathies as this long-but-didn't-feel-too-long novel unwound.

So good I read about sentient spiders.

Spiders. I read a whole book about them.

A simple concept but a fascinating read

This is going to be one of my favourite sci-fi books now. Adrian has taken a simple concept and blew it into an epic with extraordinary details. Makes for a fascinating read.