A review by comradechair
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

adventurous reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

This was a nice refreshingly easy to read book about big ideas. It's primarily about evolution, sentience and time (the collapse of one empire, the march of time for the last humans, and a new race being birthed).

I thought the chapters about the Spiders would have been too silly for me, but you really did get invested in their constantly evolving culture and science. Never thought I'd find myself rooting for a bunch of spiders so much! Really well done on that front.

As someone who studied classics I really liked one of the main human character - Marston, the last classicist in the universe! He is almost comically useless, and keeps getting dragged into things he has no control over. I'd probably be about as useful as he was!

This novel keeps you guessing with lots of twists and turns. The characters are not the deepest, but they are not the driving force of the story really and serve it well. The only reason I'm not giving it 5 stars is that the ending fell a bit flat for me personally