Reviews with content warning for Death - Children of Time

Reviews tagging 'Death'

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

26 reviews

charliereadsalot's review against another edition

4.0

4 STARS

CW: spiders (!!) & other insects, death, terrorism, mention of war, murder

This was unlike anything I've read before and though I was hesitant about it at first, I quickly began to enjoy the world building and story, as well as all the implications the technology in this book had.
First things first, about half of this book is about evolved sentient spiders but if you make it through the first fifty pages of this book, I believe you will be fine (most spider-y descriptions happen there). I at least found that as the character of Portia, Bianca, Fabian and the other spiders is explored more and more, the less I was bothered by them being spiders. But be aware.

I had expected the way this book ended to happen sometime in the middle so I was a little disappointed that I had to wait so long for the events. It is logical though, it really is more of a final showdown than a midway plot point.
It was super interesting to witness the expedited evolution of the spiders on Kern's World. Similarly, the developments on the Gilgamesh were equally fascinating. There were so many twists and turns and the thought of Holsten going through all of what he lived through was mind-boggling.

I've barely scratched the surface of what is being written in Sci-Fi and this reinvigorated my desire to seek out more creative and unusual stories in the genre. I immediately ordered the next book in this series to continue because the ending was just a mean one.

If you're intrigued, fascinated by evolution and a thought experiment (that's what this book felt like, it was really wonderful) and are unbothered by spiders, definitely give this book a try! (Bear in mind that I'm not a big fan of any creature with more than four legs and generally cannot stomach looking at only pictures of any sort of insect or spider but I was fine over the course of this book.)

Content Warnings

count_zero's review

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
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

4.0

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valjeanval's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging reflective tense slow-paced

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

5.0

This book was a real surprise. The word “epic” gets thrown around a lot, but this is the actual definition of epic. It’s a sweeping, perspective-bending epic that anyone could enjoy except perhaps arachnophobes.

Content Warnings

toopunkrockforshul's review

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
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

Really loved this book, such an interesting premise and it really explores the full depths of everything that it sets up.

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iono's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.5

Content Warnings

micheala's review against another edition

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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