Reviews with content warning for Religious bigotry - Children of Time

Reviews tagging 'Religious bigotry'

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

5 reviews

kirtreads's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious 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? No

4.75

I could not put this book down. It is one of those books that I will be thinking about for a long time. The book takes the human life is on the brink of collapse idea and turns it into something unique. This book, while playing on a lot of classic sci-fi tropes, really does something new and exciting. I really enjoyed the plot of this book, the themes that it explored and the ideas and conclusions that the novel came to.

I don't think that this book is for everyone. There is a lot of time jumping, there are some things that are left vague for the sake of time that you just kind of need to accept, and the way that characters are handled in the time skipping is confusing at first. You need to really be okay with not knowing what is going on for the first 25% of the book, but it is worth it. If you like Asimov's Foundations series you will really enjoy this. It felt like classic sci-fi without as many problematic elements.

It was confusing at first trying to keep track of all the characters. A lot are introduced quickly, and then you might not come back to that character for a good chunk of the book, but they are all important. I did struggle to keep them all straight at some points, but I generally struggle with that.

My only other critique would be that I wanted a little bit more from the ending. We spend so much time (literal centuries) getting to the conclusion that it felt a little rushed. I wanted to sit with the conclusion a little more. I know that this was originally written as a stand alone but is now the first in a trilogy so I am hoping that some of that will be resolved in the next book.

Overall, I really loved this book. It felt unique, fun, thoughtful and well written. It is hard to bring something new to the genre of sci-fi but I think that this novel did just that!

Content Warnings

maddie_can_read's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.25

I had a super difficult time getting into this book but I'm glad I powered through because I ended up really enjoying it towards the end. I did find it a bit slow and a bit plodding throughout.

I had a difficult time vibing with the writing style at first. I think it was a combination of it being written in third person but then also being kind omniscient narrator (like they knew everything about past humanity -

like comparing the spider pandemic to the black plague

.

And I just could not connect with any of the characters until almost the half way point. I don't think the author is great at characterization.

I kept going because I liked the premise and I read all these reviews talking about how weird (in a good way) the book was and just thought I'd keep going and give it some more time.

And wow, I loved it when things got weird! Having the structure of the book set up the way it is

spanning multiple generations

made it so some really interesting things could occur. Really liked how the two story-lines came to a head.

Lots of wtf moments

really was not expecting Arvana to turn away the last of humanity, the mutiny, the spiders holding a human captivity for decades, spider sexism, the captain wanting to become the ship and being kept alive by machines, the captain letting people out of some pods and them having generations of children that followed him like a cult leader, really loved the love story between the humans (how it was impacted by one of them staying out of their cold sleep for longer) and then the one between two of the spiders towards the end where the male sacrifices himself, and loved the twist/ fake-out at the end!

Content Warnings