Reviews

Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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pipode1234's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.75

lilac_rose's review against another edition

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adventurous fast-paced

3.25

The first half is as good as the first book but as we get into the second half it just goes down hill. Although, the concept of octopuses has me intrigued.

atarbett's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging medium-paced

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

4.0

erintoth's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging informative tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

dcunitz's review against another edition

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4.0

“He wished more than anything in the world to be synaesthetic right then, so he would have some extra way to process the information his senses were giving him. He had expected the alien air to be pungent, ghastly. Instead it was heady with odors his body could do nothing with. They smelled like something, like nothing. They were cocktails of molecules his nose had never needed to identify before.”

shragoo's review against another edition

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4.25

it was not quite as good as the first book in the series. The

author goes through great pains to describe how different and unknowable and foreign the anatomy and thought processes are of the octopi and the virus, and the result is that it was difficult for me to connect with the octopi and virus. In the first book, by contrast, the spiders are easy to connect with, and become characters that I was rooting for. Also, the book ends the same way as the first, where when all hope seems lost the deemed smart entity (in this book it is the kern meshner hybrid, in the first book it was the portids), figures out a non violent solution to the problem where everyone wins. It was gratifying in both books, but a bit repetitive in the second, whereas in the first it was surprising