Review – Children of Time (Children of Time, Book 1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky (4/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Science Fiction/Space Opera
Length: 609 pages
Publisher:‎ Orbit
Release Date: September 18, 2018
ASIN: B07DN8BQMD
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Childre of Time trilogy
Source: Borrowed ebook from Library
Rating: 4/5 stars

“Who will inherit this new Earth?

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age—a world terraformed and prepared for human life.

But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind’s worst nightmare.

Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?”

Series Info/Source: This is the 1st book in the Children of Time trilogy. I borrowed this on ebook from my library.

Thoughts: This was a unique sci-fi read that takes place over thousands and thousands of years. I enjoyed the premise but started to feel like things got repetitive as the story progressed. I did really enjoy the hopeful feel at the end of the story. Previous to reading this, I had also read “Service Model” which I loved and “Alien Clay” which I enjoyed. I enjoyed “Service Model” more than this book because of the more humorous tone to it.

The story starts with a scientist named Kern who is determined to start an elevated sort of human life on a terraformed planet, unfortunately during this process Earth itself collapses. At that point the story bounces between a life-form evolving on the new terraformed planet and a gigantic spaceship that is trying to find a new home for the remnants of humanity.

This is a story that takes place over thousands of years. We switch POV between a sentient spider species that is evolving on a planet terraformed to support human life and a colony ship called the Gilgamesh. The Gilgamesh is full of mostly frozen humans that will be awoken when the ship approaches a planet that is safe for them. We see mostly through the eyes of the ship’s classic specialist who is woken up intermittently to help decode the signal coming from a satellite around this terraformed planet.

I really enjoyed the premise here and also enjoyed watching the sentient spiders develop from basic insects into an intelligent and unique race. Watching how they get to endpoints in technology by completely different routes than humanity was intriguing. However, they also run into a lot of the same developmental challenges….for example lack of resources, inequality among gender, and wars with other clans/species.

The parts that take place on the Gilgamesh were less entertaining to me. The crew of the Gilgamesh is woken up at intervals with long stretches of time in between. We only hear from the classics specialist, and he is woken up less frequently than the others. While it was interesting to watch him readjust to a vastly changed situation after sleeping for hundreds of years, it made the story feel very fractured to me. You were really only getting part of the story and then having to play catch-up as the classicist played catch-up.

I did think this got a bit long and repetitive. There is a whole portion of the book where Gligamesh seeks out other terraformed planets and the spiders continue to evolve, some of this felt unnecessary to me and made the book feel longer than it needed to.

I really enjoyed how the book ended; it had a very realistic and uplifting feel to it. It makes you think a lot more about how humans are always trying to “win” when there could be a lot of other creative solutions to cohabitation available.

My Summary (4/5): Overall I really enjoyed this science fiction story. It is a unique story that is very creative and makes you think. I do think some parts feel a bit slow and I also felt like the portions told from Gilgamesh were very fractured. However, I am happy I read it. I do not think I will read the next two books in this series. Based on comments on those books, they are basically the same story as this book in a different setting. Instead, I think I will pick up some different books by Tchaikovsky, he has plenty of books out that I haven’t read. Maybe I will take a gander at some of his epic fantasy next.