Reviews with content warning for Genocide - Children of Time

This book has a really cool premise, in terms of post apocalyptic SciFi. The set up is that humans had started terraforming the galaxy before a nuclear war destroyed all humans living off planet, and threw Earth into an ice age.

We then get a ship with a few thousand of the remaining humans centuries later, travelling through space (in stais) in the hopes of finding a new home.

The planet they do eventually arrive at was supposed to be an experiment to "speed run" evolution and create new humans from monkeys + an engineered virus. However, those monkeys died being sent to the planet, and giant senteant insects evolve instead.

Cool right? I had a few quibbles with the spider sections (they don't know what humans/earth is, and they don't know about the virus let alone how it functions, so stop talking about it in the narrative portions of their sections; and I was kinda disappointed that their society also was fundamentally sexist and pretty much a 1:1 of humans in the medial ages in terms of society)

The humans finally get onto the planet, and we get drop kicked into full on horror, specifically graphic body horror. So I noped out of a story I was otherwise enjoying at 37%

If you're cool with horror, I'm guessing this book is going to continue to play with some really interesting ideas, however as someone who cannot deal with horror, it's a DNF for me.

Content Warnings

garrettrook's review against another edition

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adventurous reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

vicky3's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

nodogsonthemoon's review

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adventurous emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Content Warnings

cookiecat73's review

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

Content Warnings

saltycoffee's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

rachel1's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is what sci-fi should be about. Someone using their expertise to create the most in-depth worldbuilding. I didn't expect the author's zoology degree to be relevant, boy was I wrong. The human parts were good but it was the spider parts I was really invested in. I would tell my twin sister everything about how the spiders' society and biology are evolving. I didn't tell her much about the humans.

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