Reviews - Children of Time

7.35k reviews for:

Children of Time

Adrian Tchaikovsky

4.29 AVERAGE

rchan11's review against another edition

3.25

adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

kirill_reads_sff's review against another edition

4.0

Solid sci-fi with rich world-building, but also disappointingly bland characters

(Warning: very minor spoilers up ahead.)

Tchaikovsky’s “Children of Time” sets an interesting premise: what if humankind ran an experiment to accelerate natural evolution on an Earth-like planet? Without spoiling the story too much, unsurprisingly a lot of things go wrong, so a few millennia later humanity has to deal with a planet full of self-aware, self-conscious spiders.

The novel is deep on many levels. First, it reflects upon humanity’s irrational yet prevalent tendency to destroy not only itself, but also everything around it. The novel also explores what is so unique to humans (and other species) that makes them prosper and thrive? Tchaikovsky’s answer is cooperation. “Children of Time” is a sort of a manifesto for peace and empathy not only within the world of Homo Sapiens, but also beyond it.

At the same time, “Children of Time” is also a thought experiment. If a species vastly different from apes suddenly started to develop a society, what would it look like? What would their technology be based upon? The ensuing result is so different from any human society (like spiders having radio without a wheel) and yet similar at the same time (like the fight of the disenfranchised for their rights).

Unfortunately, the novel isn’t without its shortcomings: its characters. The timeline jumps around quite a bit and in the spider storyline a single character would often feature only in a few chapters, which doesn’t give them enough room for development. When it comes to humans, we do follow mostly the same people, but they’re oversimplified and predictable: Guyen is a power maniac, Vitas is a semi-mad scientist, Lain is a grumpy engineer. And most of all, Mason Holsten, a classist and historian whose job sounds genuinely interesting, but who has no idea who he is and what he wants from his life. He just flows along the narrative while different people kick him around for their own benefit. How does someone so unambitious end up as part of the “Key Crew” of a vital last-ditch-effort colonisation spaceship?

The world of “Children of Time” is rich and deep, but sadly this depth just isn’t there when it comes to the novel’s characters. It was still a satisfying read, so I will be picking up the next book in the series.

dc_elmo's review against another edition

4.0

4.5/5

bookreader69420247's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Excellent story. I really felt like I was on a journey.

I also really felt the existential angst of humans in an unforgiving environment through the main character. The parallels with the other POV and the overall hope there was done really well. l

The POV switching between chapters and what that meant for the passage of time was great.