samullen reviewed Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Time, #1)
Review of 'Children of Time' on 'GoodReads'
1 star
Despairingly cynical and utterly naive.
paperback, 608 pages
Published June 4, 2015 by Tor.
Children of Time
4 stars
(261 reviews)
Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet.
Who will inherit this new Earth?
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life.
But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.
BillieCodes reviewed Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Time, #1)
Review of 'Children of Time' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
This is a book about humanity, and spiderity (is that a word?) from it's peak down to it's rock bottom and then back again.
I don't want to talk too much about it because the story has so much in it, and to describe parts of it would overlook others. Needless to say I was very affected by the story, I cried a lot and felt real links to the plight of people, and to arthropods (that frankly I have somewhat an irrational disgust of).
I can't recommend this enough.
Steen Christiansen reviewed Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Time, #1)
Review of 'Children of Time' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Astonishingly good sf that reverses many conventional tropes into stellar, scintillating form.
Lord of Candy reviewed Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Time, #1)
Review of 'Children of Time' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
What an interesting read. I'm so glad I finished it. I had a character moment that I .. just.. umfphforthesakeofallthingsgoodstopingsostupid .. but I let it pass and really really glad I let it go. lol.
It was solid, well thought out; the ingenuity and scale of growth in time and literal evolution is enough, really. You simply have to marvel at a mind that wants to trip the light fandango with uplifting arachnids--arthropods and a multithousand-year-old journey of homo sapiens. You know, what could go wrong?
I had a few character issues which were like hangnails to me due to my usual issue of not-being-me-syndrome. So that can't take away from what is a really good glance at humanity and all its dirty sordid cyclical juvenile-ism.
For a new take, a few lessons in biology, otherwise a really easy to digest science fiction read (despite it's huge scope) I think …
What an interesting read. I'm so glad I finished it. I had a character moment that I .. just.. umfphforthesakeofallthingsgoodstopingsostupid .. but I let it pass and really really glad I let it go. lol.
It was solid, well thought out; the ingenuity and scale of growth in time and literal evolution is enough, really. You simply have to marvel at a mind that wants to trip the light fandango with uplifting arachnids--arthropods and a multithousand-year-old journey of homo sapiens. You know, what could go wrong?
I had a few character issues which were like hangnails to me due to my usual issue of not-being-me-syndrome. So that can't take away from what is a really good glance at humanity and all its dirty sordid cyclical juvenile-ism.
For a new take, a few lessons in biology, otherwise a really easy to digest science fiction read (despite it's huge scope) I think you'll enjoy it. :)
Yashima reviewed Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Time, #1)
Review of 'Children of Time' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
2017: Reposted to my blog to celebrate news that this is being made into a movie by Lionsgate! Team Spider!
2015: If you ever wanted to see zoology turned into science fiction and are not afraid of spiders, read this book.
This was a fascinating read. It starts out in a future where humans are reaching out into space, traveling, and starting to colonize other solar systems. They have only just begun a huge terraforming process on several worlds, when war breaks out and destroys Earth along with all it's colonies.
The reader is then treated to a somewhat strange experience of the viewpoint of a spider. Because one terraforming project survived. The "Brin" project - an obvious reference to David Brin's Uplift series which I have yet to read - where a scientist want to populate a planet with monkeys and a nano-virus supposed to uplift them, by hastening …
2017: Reposted to my blog to celebrate news that this is being made into a movie by Lionsgate! Team Spider!
2015: If you ever wanted to see zoology turned into science fiction and are not afraid of spiders, read this book.
This was a fascinating read. It starts out in a future where humans are reaching out into space, traveling, and starting to colonize other solar systems. They have only just begun a huge terraforming process on several worlds, when war breaks out and destroys Earth along with all it's colonies.
The reader is then treated to a somewhat strange experience of the viewpoint of a spider. Because one terraforming project survived. The "Brin" project - an obvious reference to David Brin's Uplift series which I have yet to read - where a scientist want to populate a planet with monkeys and a nano-virus supposed to uplift them, by hastening their evolution towards intelligence. The monkeys however never made it to the surface of the planet. The virus did. What it found were spiders. Don't let the strangeness stop you.
The author then takes the reader on a ride through the evolution of spider-kind and their development into a technological society including their discovery of religion, and agriculture, their war with the ants and their politics. This rather alien viewpoint reads weird at first but gets more and more fascinating as the story grows and continues. A bit confusing might be that the spiders have the same few names throughout the generations, but it helps with continuity and develops Portia and Fabian and the others into characters despite their short appearances in the story.
About 2.000 years after Earth was destroyed the human protagonist of the other half of the story is introduced. Holsten Mason is a historian. Mankind had managed to survive the war, rebuilt some of their civilization during the Nuclear winter only to discover that Earth was doomed once the ice age ended and released the poisons under the ice. Holsten is aboard the Gilgamesh, one of a few so-called generation ships sent out in a last desperate bid for mankind's survival. Everyone aboard is frozen in cryo tanks only waken for short intervals when human intervention is needed.
The human storyline starts when the Gilgamesh enters the system with the spider planet. It doesn't go peacefully and the Gilgamesh has to resume his galactic travels in search for a different target. But in the far future of course spiders and humans will meet again, and so Holsten travels into the future being thawed for short episodes of adventure.
This was an incredible read and getting into the spider-mindset was fascinating - even if it started out a bit slow. I definitely recommend this to science fiction fans.
And the end ... well it is really fitting for this story. It is a surprisingly last-minute-turnaround happy ending, just what I was hoping for.
