Reviews with content warning for Xenophobia - Children of Time

Reviews tagging 'Xenophobia'

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

16 reviews

yuripiano's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

God, where do I even begin....
This is easily, easily one of my favorite books of all time, no questions asked.

The way that different points of view are written is so deeply interesting regardless of who the chapter is about, and the juxtaposition of evolving spiders with devolving humans and the question of what it means to be human is just... so. incredibly. good. You really feel and pull for the spiders, and there's a sense of "humanity" tied to their un-humanness that's lacking in the actual humans that's super fascinating to read. i feel like i could talk forever about the crew of the Gilgamesh contrasted with their predecessors and how that relates to the spiders and Kern - it's deeply fascinating and exciting and really thought provoking.

i don't think i can sing enough praises - i'm trying to come up with things to criticize, because every time i write a review here, i'm like "this book was okay!" and then i just bash the book to pieces, but...
the pacing is snappy, the characters are incredible, and the constant tension of feeling the three main points swirling like they're in a whirlpool and you're just waiting for them to converge is such a page turner!

i suppose, if i had to point something out, some metaphors and such were very spelled out... but, coming from the internal thoughts/point of view from the classicist a lot of the time, i felt that it was fine, and honestly, i didn't particularly feel like it was talking down to the reader either.

At the end of the day, it's an incredible read, and easily the first book i would recommend to someone. If this book were 2000 pages longer, it would be too short.

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amorphousbl0b's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful reflective tense slow-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? Yes

4.5

A test of empathy, taking one of mankind's great anxieties - the spider - and bringing us on a journey alongside them that leads us to understand their completely alien society even greater than that of the human characters to which we ostensibly relate. With beautifully detailed worldbuilding, its reputation as one of the great works of modern science fiction is wholly deserved.

May cure your arachnophobia.

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