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A review by teokajlibroj
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
3.0
This book certainly deserves credit for its originality. The imagination used in creating an alternative evolutionary history of spiders is very impressive and the strongest part of the book. I also really enjoyed the gender dynamics among the spiders.
Unfortunately, the author goes too far in how logical and understandable the spiders are, resulting in an absurdly over-powered civilisation. The nanovirus is basically magic that makes everything easy and convenient for the spiders.
So the spiders create a utopia, a civilisation without any of the flaws of real civilisations. They never build monuments (because that would be wasteful), acquire luxuries (because all resources must be spent on science), have a king or single strong ruler (everything is decided democratically), create a religion that restricts them in anyway (because everyone agrees science rules) or with one exception, ever go to war. I admire the author for imaging a completely different kind of society, but I never believed the spider society was real. Everything was just too easy. Were there never disagreements over limited resources? No power struggles? Did the enormous growth in the spider population not have a single negative impact on the environment?
The treatment of the humans is the opposite extreme, just as there is not a single unlikeable spider, there is not a single likeable human. Just as everything that possible could go right does go right for the spiders, everything that could go wrong for the humans does. Technology for the spiders moves in a straight line of progress, whereas it falls apart for humans. There is something of a contradiction in the treatment of technology. The human plot emphasises the dangers of technological advancement, but in the spider plot there is absolutely no possible negative effects of technology.
This book is about the vast overview of history and as a result, none of the individual characters are particularly memorable. Most of the human plots seemed to be there just to fill space and give the spiders time to advance, with most of the interesting development happening off-page.
Unfortunately, the author goes too far in how logical and understandable the spiders are, resulting in an absurdly over-powered civilisation. The nanovirus is basically magic that makes everything easy and convenient for the spiders.
So the spiders create a utopia, a civilisation without any of the flaws of real civilisations. They never build monuments (because that would be wasteful), acquire luxuries (because all resources must be spent on science), have a king or single strong ruler (everything is decided democratically), create a religion that restricts them in anyway (because everyone agrees science rules) or with one exception, ever go to war. I admire the author for imaging a completely different kind of society, but I never believed the spider society was real. Everything was just too easy. Were there never disagreements over limited resources? No power struggles? Did the enormous growth in the spider population not have a single negative impact on the environment?
The treatment of the humans is the opposite extreme, just as there is not a single unlikeable spider, there is not a single likeable human. Just as everything that possible could go right does go right for the spiders, everything that could go wrong for the humans does. Technology for the spiders moves in a straight line of progress, whereas it falls apart for humans. There is something of a contradiction in the treatment of technology. The human plot emphasises the dangers of technological advancement, but in the spider plot there is absolutely no possible negative effects of technology.
This book is about the vast overview of history and as a result, none of the individual characters are particularly memorable. Most of the human plots seemed to be there just to fill space and give the spiders time to advance, with most of the interesting development happening off-page.