‘Entertaining, smart, surprising and unexpectedly human’Patrick Ness, author of A Monster Calls
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky is an epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a hostile, terraformed planet.
The last remnants of the human race have 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, its new occupiers 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 will emerge as the rightful heirs of this new Earth?
‘A fabulous sense of scale that only someone as talented as Adrian Tchaikovsky can pull off’ – Peter F. Hamilton, author of Exodus: The Archimedes Engine
Dive into Tchaikovsky's chillingly brilliant universe with Children of Time, the winner of the 30th anniversary Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel.
Continue the journey with Children of Ruin and Children of Memory.
- ISBN10 1447273311
- ISBN13 9781447273318
- Publish Date 4 June 2015
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Pan Macmillan
- Imprint Pan Books
- Format eBook (EPUB)
- Pages 480
- Language English
Reviews
pamela
10/10. No notes.
I can't believe it took me this long to finally read this book, because it's just a masterclass in plot, world building, pace, and conflict.
Renee
HekArtemis
I found the time aspect to be super interesting and honestly terrifying. The idea of going into stasis and awakening in some unknown future, every time more and more unsure of what hell had happened this time, who had you now, what do they want from you this century? Poor Holsten. But then the spider timeline is generational instead. It was an interesting view of things. I think never really knowing for sure just how much time has passed each time was a good way to do it too.
Ah so much I could say. Whatever, it's a fantastic book. I am almost too scared to read the sequels cause how can they live up to this?
adamfortuna
The premise is this: Earth is in the process of terraforming a new planet to make it habitable. The plan is to contaminate this new world with a genetic virus that will cause the monkies there to become more sentient in the far future. Something goes wrong (we're still in chapter 1 here) and instead a planet of insects are grown.
The most impressive part of this entire story is the focus on insect chemistry and what it would look like for a planet of intelligent spiders to rise. They face many of the same issues we do in our society today - gender rights (although the main issue is to allow males to NOT be eaten after mating), societal structures, trust, communication and math. The approach to solving these issues is entirely insect based, and some of them blew my mind.