Children of Time

CHILDREN OF TIME

Written by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Published by Pan Macmillan, June 4, 2015

My star rating – 3 stars

THE SYNOPSIS:

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?

MY REVIEW:

What is it with me and reading books that are really hard to review this year?? There have been quite a few and here is yet another one lol. There was a lot of pressure to like this one too. My bookish twin Justine (from the YouTube channel I Should Read That) LOVES this book. I think it’s one of her favourite sci-fi novels and she recommends it to almost everyone who will listen lol. I thought I would love it…. and, in certain ways, I actually did. But it didn’t quite hit the mark for me.

Before I go into the meat of the review though, I need to mention….. if you don’t like spiders…. do NOT read this book! There are a lot of spiders in this book and they’re probably half of the character perspectives in here! It’s a little creepy but ended up being a lot cooler than I thought it would be!

Ok, so. This book is about an earth that’s falling apart so humanity is on the search for a new planet with earth like qualities to inherit. A planet was found and a scientific team is on the way there with a virus in hand to increase the chances of humans to evolve faster and better. Yeah. it’s kind of terrifying! When one of the scientists goes rogue and explodes the ship, the head of this adventure escapes through a pod. Meanwhile, on the very planet they’re wanting to take over, spiders and ants are thriving as they’ve been infected with the very virus that was intended to evolve humans.

One of the best things about this book is that it’s told over the span of a few thousand years. We get to see new generations of these spiders, each stronger and smarter than the last. The spiders themselves retained all of the memories and information from previous generations and carried that along with them. I really loved that! But, when it came to the humans, there wasn’t a whole lot of growth there. The humans would go into hyper sleep, wake up to a problem, fix it, then go back to sleep. I felt like there was so much more character growth with the spiders (never thought I would say that, but here we are lol) and the humans weren’t explored as much as I wanted. They were so focused on the problem at hand that we didn’t learn as much about them as I wanted.

I’m the type of person who LOVES info dumping. Give me all the info dumping! I want details about the world, the plot, and everything possible. This book proved to me though…. a line can be crossed and a book can become TOO detailed. I was so happy to be able to envision everything to the last detail yet there are only so many times that I can read the same information before i’m bored. It was too much and I was weighed down by all the details. Some of it was repetitive and some of it was a continuation. Regardless, I felt like I could skip 5 pages and still not miss a thing. If this book was condensed by a few hundred pages, it would have been a knock out!

As overwhelming as this book could be at times, this was one of the most unique books i’ve ever read! A new planet, spider characters, evolution, relations between humans and insects with intellect…. it was crazy! And, as I mentioned above, the span of time and generations made it all so interesting. I never thought I could say that I liked a book about spiders…. but here we are!

If you like books with interesting perspective, space travel, AI’s, time skipping, wars, and finding a new home for humanity, you might love this! Just be prepared for a lot of details and information lol.

Until next time, happy reading!