Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The astonishing sequel to Children of Time, the award-winning novel of humanity’s battle for survival on a terraformed planet.
Long ago, Earth’s terraforming program sent ships out to build new homes for humanity among the stars and made an unexpected discovery: a planet with life. But the scientists were unaware that the alien ecosystem was more developed than the primitive life forms originally discovered.
Now, thousands of years later, the Portiids and their humans have sent an exploration vessel following fragmentary radio signals. They discover a system in crisis, warring factions trying to recover from an apocalyptic catastrophe arising from what the early terraformers awoke all those years before.
For the Reading Challenge(s):
2025 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #42: Non-human antagonist)
The Reason
The next book in the Children of Time series. I enjoyed the first book, so I thought I’d read this one too.
The Quotes
“We’re going on an adventure.”
“Advance science as far as you like, the human mind continued to place itself at the centre of the universe.”
“An inclination to play God was part and parcel of wanting to go out and terraform other worlds, but good practice was to at least play nicely with the rest of the pantheon.”
“Senkovi’s personal theory was that the pressure of being in the middle of the food chain was an essential prerequisite for complex intelligence. Like humans (and like Portiid spiders, had he only known), octopuses had developed in a world where they were both hunter and hunted. Top predators, in Senkovi’s assessment, were an intellectual dead end.”
The Narrator(s)
Mel Hudson. I continue to enjoy her narration.
My Thoughts
This book went simultaneously faster and slower than I expected, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like so many things happened, but they happened slowly, and most of it was anticipation waiting for things to happen than things actually happening.
There are new sentient organisms in this book, in addition to the spiders from the first book; octopuses and slime parasites. The slime parasites were scary and the octopuses were mysterious, and I feel like we still haven’t gotten to know either of them well yet. There seems to be a continuity with the books though, so I am curious to see what happens with them in the next book. I’d love to see their adventures and everything they learn and whatever comes out from that!
I am also happy to see the way the humans and spiders work together in this book, two species evolving together and learning to live together, work together, etc. I loved seeing it on the page. These books span centuries and generations of life, so we don’t always have the same characters from the start of the story, but the stories and characters really bury themselves into your heart, even so! I’m excited to read the next book and see what happens next!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
