Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky #BookReview

A race for survival among the stars… Humanity’s last survivors escaped earth’s ruins to find a new home. But when they find it, can their desperation overcome its dangers?

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? 

Title: Children of Time | Series: Children of Time | Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky | Publisher: Panmacmillan | Pub. Date: 2015-6-4 | Pages: 600 | Genre: Science Fiction | Language: English | Triggers: None | Rating: 2 out of 5 | Source: Self-purchased audiobook

Children of Time Review

I don’t have the time or patience to post a longer review of this book, so we’ll keep it short and (not very) sweet.

I am aware that many people out there think this is a wonderful book. It has been given plenty of awards and positive reviews. It is certainly a Book With a Vision and contains a Depressingly Realistic Look at Humanity. I can acknowledge all of these things.

What I can also acknowledge is –Sweet Baby Cthulhu — this book was way too long and every time the POV switched to the humans, I wanted to curl up in a ball of sheer misery born of intense boredom.

The spiders were cool, though.

I liked Tchaikovsky’s idea for accelerating evolution in Children of Time. The way that it went wrong was believable, and the results were fascinating. I don’t like spiders, but I liked these spiders. I liked the rapid build of a civilization, and using the same names over and over is a neat trick that adds some steady ground to the rapid change.

The middle of it bogged, though. Horribly so. I found myself completely unable and/or unwilling to care about any of the human characters. There is, for the majority of the book, no interaction between the characters on Kern’s world and the characters in the Gilgamesh. So you have about 200 pages minimum filled with events that you just don’t give a flying squirrel about.

Overall, the pace was monotonous, the split POV between humans and spiders was tedious, and the action at the end comes nowhere near making up for all the yawn-fest that comes before it.

I cannot recommend Children of Time. However, to end on a positive note, I think the narrator – Mel Hudson – did a solid job. Her voice was mostly pleasing to listen to and though there wasn’t a lot of variation in her voices, I think she did the best job she could.

Thank you to Bookden Jen for reading this with me and making me finish it!
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