Book Review: Children of Time

Children of Time is the first in the series of books by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The blurb is misleading--I had anticipated the novel following a terraformed world that Humans come to inhabit. But that is really not the focus at all.

The novel actually follows the planet itself and its creatures that inhabit it. Essentially, there is an “experimental” world where consciousness is given to animals. Only this time it ends up in spiders, not monkeys as originally intended.

There are three points of view: the Human-turned-machine who orbits the terraformed planet and waits for evolution of the spiders, a Human survivor named Holsten aboard the last Human colony ship (the Gilgamesh) following the collapse of Humanity, and the spiders on the planet below.

I really loved the spider’s point of view. That is where this novel excels. The blurb for Mountain in the Sea is what this book delivers for me. We get to see spider culture and how another living organism has such a different view of life.

In contrast, I found the Human storyline...pointless? I don’t like any of the Human characters, but the spiders are actually fantastic. I love the spiders (despite being afraid of them) because they have some of the best characterization.

We don’t see much interaction between the spiders and Humans. That only comes towards the end. Plus, the ending feels so out of place to me because the lead up to it made it feel jarring.

Lastly, while I enjoyed this book, this author has a tendency to be long-winded. This book is not the exception, there’s a good amount of fluff and excess that bogs it down. But because the spiders were written so well I continued to read even the portions I felt were unnecessary.

I give this a 3.5 planets because I LOVED the spiders and the world building the author does for them. However, the Human portion, although rich in lore, didn’t strike me as hard. You could completely jettison the Human portion and the novel would be just as good in my opinion--if not better.