"Children of Ruin" by Adrian Tchaikovsky (BR)

[Kaa]

It's finally here! Other than first impressions, please use spoiler tags and indicate chapter or percent so others can follow along as they read.

[Kaa]

I'm still in the middle of Children of Time, but I'm hoping to jump into this as soon as I'm done - the ebook just appeared among my library checkouts so I'm ready to go!

[Dawn F]

The audio is out in two days so I’ll wait for that!

[Ruud]

I loved Children of Time, it hooked me on science fiction. I'm only 35 pages in and can't wait to continue ready.
I'm very curious to read what you all think.

[Robert]

My copy is arriving today from amazon, cannot wait to start reading.

[Oleksandr]

I plan to join you but in a few days - have to finish another book first

[Gabi]

The audio is available! I'll be setting "The Name of the wind" aside and be joining the club as per today's lunchbreak :D

[Gabi]

10% in and loving it! This time it seems (view spoiler)[ to be about octopuses/octopi/octopodes … whatever ;) … and again I'm fascinated (hide spoiler)]

[Dawn F]

Just started, and loooooved the first 30 minutes. I’m totally back into it <333

[Kaa]

End of Ch 5: (view spoiler)[I was really wondering how he was going to explain their survival through the computer virus, but "everything was shut down due to overly curious octopuses" is not an answer I would have thought of! I love it! (hide spoiler)]

[Gabi]

Kaa wrote: "End of Ch 5: [spoilers removed]"

Yes, that was great.
I'm now 29% in ("Present 2"), and again I'm completely thrilled by Tchaikovsky's ability to take biological concepts and refine them, use the science to create a believable, alien-to-us evolution. He is so good! - this is science fiction - this is the very reason why I read SF.

[Kaa]

Gabi, I agree, the science in these books is so cool. I love the exploration of how non-human consciousness might manifest.

I also continue to be very impressed by how he weaves together so many viewpoints across such a wide range of time without loosing a feeling of connection to individual characters. This story approaches time a little differently than Children of Time, but again it manages to successfully span a long time frame and many characters.

[Oleksandr]

finished it and liked it very much! not worse than the first book

[Silvana]

You guys convinced me. I am going to buy the book.

[Chris]

Finished. I did like the first one better, but this one was very good. I've enjoyed reading about octopuses and their intelligence and mischievous nature so it's fun to read a story about them becoming a space tech species. The other species did not appeal as much to me.

I wish that the stomatopods from the first book had gotten more than a brief mention. Kern's World in general seems just as worthy of exploration and interspecies diplomacy as unknown planets. What about the ants? I think they deserve to be more than living computer nodes.

[Rachel]

Ready to start this tonight - it’s pretty hefty for a paperback!

[Raucous]

I'm not quite 10% into the book and so far it's not really grabbing me by the eyeballs like the first one did. (view spoiler)[That's a bit odd as I've always been fascinated by octopuses. Having them in the bay at the foot of our beach helps. A sort of related book that's been recommended to me is The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness. It's in my infinite TBR list and Children of Ruin may finally get me to read it. (hide spoiler)] It may be a pacing/background issue (even the characters are sounding impatient to get on with it) and it looks like it may be picking up soon.

[Robert]

First it was spiders. Now it's (view spoiler)[ OCTOPUSES!! (hide spoiler)] o_0

[Christopher]

I started this last week and am up to page 232. Good so far, but I agree that this one not quite as compelling as the first (which I rated 5 stars).

[Christopher]

On page 265 and (view spoiler)[not loving this zombie parasite turn of events, like a record scratch sound to my reading interest, but I'll persist. (hide spoiler)]

[Raucous]

Christopher wrote: "On page 265 and [spoilers removed]"

Yeah. I had the same reaction to that introduction. (view spoiler)[ That's in addition to just not finding my way to a convincing evolutionary justification for that particular life form. (hide spoiler)]

[Christopher]

DNF’ing at page 365.