Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time - Review

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A sci-fi epic charting the destiny of a new Earth.

A failed experiment to terraform a new planet to sustain human life nonetheless results in unforeseen and accelerated invertebrate evolution.

The dying remnants of the human race have escaped a desecrated Earth, searching among the stars for a new home. But their promised land is now the planet of the spiders.

As two civilisations collide, these children of time are caught up in their own battle of the titans, fighting for the survival of their species and the inheritance of the earth.

Craving sci-fi to get lost in, I found 'Children of Time' in my search and couldn't wait to plummet into a novel of futuristic space travel and alien life. The world-building is sublime, especially in the evolution of the spiders, told across generations. Not only exploring the science of ecosystems and evolution, we witness many aspects that come with the development of an advanced species and the building of a civilisation, including sociological and psychological perspectives developed from the starting point of the nature of spiders as we would recognise them. There are also elements of spirituality and how these questioning beings develop a faith system - a story of reaching inside oneself at the same time as reaching for the stars and searching for God.

In the society of the spiders, we recognise parallels and a reflection of human society - the class structure, gender inequality, the acceptance of certain behaviours as normal when directed at certain groups. In just one striking scene, a dominant female in a lofty position of power and prestige argues that this is simply the way things are. A brave and rebellious male responds that things are the way we make them. This is also a story about conquest and revolution; about how history (perhaps herstory would best describe this arachnid equivalent) is formed and how it becomes legend, and how a culture should learn from that history to better itself.

Meanwhile, the final frontier of humanity strives on, surviving, determined in their mission, while forever in the shadow of the darker side of their nature, one that reached out from the relic of humanity's past to destroy them once again. Alas, our predilection for destruction maintains throughout millennia. Yet, there remains hope for survival. Though, in the end, it may actually be the spiders who teach humanity how to be human.

The core characters, both human and spider, are the driving force behind the evolving plot. For all the fascination that comes with travelling into the future amongst the stars, and witnessing the birth and growth of life, the development of these sentient and intelligent arachnids on this alien yet familiar planet, it is the character development that truly strikes the chord throughout this remarkable and imaginative novel. When science fiction has a heart, when it has a soul, it combines emotional depth with a gripping story on an epic scale to create something truly magical, a tale that speaks a deeper truth than can be achieved through a narrower lens. This was what I was searching for and I found it in this superlative space saga.

Deeply immersive, endlessly fascinating, and surprisingly moving, 'Children of Time' is a sci-fi masterpiece - one that continues into the second novel, 'Children of Ruin'.



View all my reviews
Visit me on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter
Follow me on Instagram