Children of Time (Children of Time, #1)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

made them with regret but without hesitation.

Great turn of phrase!

The thoughts flowing, helpless and unconstrained, out of that broken mind as though it is trying to pour itself empty, and yet there is always more. Avrana recoils and, for a terrible, frozen moment knows that if what she has touched is an organic mind, then I must be . . . but she has, after all, an almost infinite capacity to overlook, and that moment of self-reflection is gone, and along with it any threat of revelation.

I really like this - the horrible truth about Avrana

She and they share ancestors five hundred million years old, before the stuff of life separated into those who would forever carry their nerves upon their back and those that would carry them within their belly.

We often forget that we humans share so much with the world around us.

alien in a way that meant no human could see them and recognize them as evidence of life from elsewhere.

Great explanation for the Fermi Paradox

They are Earth. Their form does not matter. They are her children.