A review by victoria_mh
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

adventurous dark hopeful informative mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.75

There are some really cool concepts here and as someone with an amateurish interest in spiders, the book appealed to me. The writing style was one I enjoyed for the most part, though (to be nitpicky) there were a few sentences or short paragraphs where he repeated words and it occurred enough times that it irritated me. I felt the first half of the book in general went at a better pace than the latter; it felt like the excitement had worn off a bit by then. Some of the technology, particularly that of the spiders, seemed hand-wavey, or at the very least I struggled to imagine how it would actually work. The book really shines with its description of spider society and how they communicate with each other and other species; it was interesting to see how their social mores and understanding of science and divinity evolved over generations. Also as someone with an interest in languages both ancient and modern, I could see a bit of myself in the classicist (and main human character) Holsten - though I would have loved more detail on the linguistic problems touched on in the book!