Teaser

Humanity is on its last legs. Fleeing a doomed Earth, the starship Gilgamesh carries its human cargo across the stars to a new world. But this world is not meant for us. On Kern’s World, another species has emerged as victor. A species with legs to spare . . .

Review

This isn’t the first time I’ve read Children of Time. I can’t remember when my first time was, but it was soon after the paperback release. That means there was enough of a gap between publication and my arrival on the scene that the hype had already started to build. That happens a lot in genre fiction. The hype around a book explodes, I grab the book, and by the time I’ve come to my own conclusions, the hype has already faded away. this isn’t the case for Children of Time. In the decade since Adrian Tchaikovsky took a break from his fantasy epic Shadows of the Apt and dipped his toes into the waters of science fiction, he has become one of the frontrunners of the genre. A man who puts out multiple elaborate and well thought ought books a year. Children of Time itself has gone down as a modern classic, and I dare say that if it holds that title after a decade in the wilderness, it’s a label that will continue to stick.

On this reread, I wasn’t alone. I was joined by a close friend who was new to Tchaikovsky’s work. It was great to see a fresh-faced approach alongside my jaded one, and the buddy read conversations have really helped crystallised my thoughts on the book as a whole. I don’t think any of my opinions on the book have changed, but now that I have a better understanding of science fiction to compare the book against, what stands out the most is how truly ground-breaking Tchaikovsky’s work is.

Some of my thoughts here are going to border on spoiler talk, so bear that in mind if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing. Anyway, the book is split into two strands, each crossing thousands of years. On the one hand, we have a human crew looking for a world they can live on. Going in and out of suspended animation, these last survivors of the human race would have been the heroes of any other book. Indeed, there are a lot of heroic elements to them. But what we see most of all is humanity’s propensity for self-directed violence. Civilisation as we know it, the book argues, is not sustainable in the long run. Something needs to give, but nobody is willing to take that first step.

Concurrently, on a world initially planned for a new human race, we have spiders. Big spiders. Intelligent spiders. But spiders nonetheless. Tchaikovsky’s reputation as the genre’s go-to bug guy is well-earned, and his Portiids feel resolutely nonhuman from start to finish. The present tense used in these chapters gives them a nature documentary feel, even as the spiders move from simple beasts to world-spanning masters of their domain. We see the full history of the uplifted spiders, and though they become sentient and sapient, they never feel like humans in spider costumes. They remain spiders.

When the cultures do clash, we get the most powerful ending to a book I’ve come across lately. Adrian Tchaikovsky, to the best of my knowledge, is a human. And he doesn’t argue that human life isn’t worth saving. There’s no nihilism here. The first time I read this book, I couldn’t help but feel that humans lost. And we certainly don’t win. the humanity that emerges from the end of this book is not the one that starts it. Something has given, and it is humanity that has done the giving. Our species is worth saving, but not at any cost. In order to live on, first we have to change.

Children of Time is a truly phenomenal novel. It dares to do new things. It tells a story that no one else has told. It also marked the start of a truly remarkable career. For all of these reasons, I am going to add my voice to the majority. This book will go down as a classic of twenty-first century science fiction.

Book Stats

• Children of Time #1
• First Published 2015
• 600 Pages