Reviews with content warning for War - Children of Time

Picking up this book, 'space spiders' was not on my Bingo card. After finishing it, I can honestly say that I'll never look at a spider the same way again.

This was solid science fiction: lots of exciting plot points, reflections and commentaries about the nature of humanity, anthropological explorations of 'alien' cultures, and a dash of humor/irony thrown in.

The writing took me a while to get into, I kept fumbling over some words or sentences, but now that I'm into it I'll continue on to books 2 and 3.

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linda_wolf's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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cadimy's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No

3.5

It was a bit slow to get through, and the needless use of a slur was off putting. Interesting idea, will make me think twice next time I go to squish a spider.

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jetpackdracula's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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starbits140's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Diverse cast of characters? No

5.0

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bethr's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This novel kept surprising me. I couldn’t predict the ending, but it was excellent. Audiobook narration also excellent.

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kirtreads's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

I could not put this book down. It is one of those books that I will be thinking about for a long time. The book takes the human life is on the brink of collapse idea and turns it into something unique. This book, while playing on a lot of classic sci-fi tropes, really does something new and exciting. I really enjoyed the plot of this book, the themes that it explored and the ideas and conclusions that the novel came to.

I don't think that this book is for everyone. There is a lot of time jumping, there are some things that are left vague for the sake of time that you just kind of need to accept, and the way that characters are handled in the time skipping is confusing at first. You need to really be okay with not knowing what is going on for the first 25% of the book, but it is worth it. If you like Asimov's Foundations series you will really enjoy this. It felt like classic sci-fi without as many problematic elements.

It was confusing at first trying to keep track of all the characters. A lot are introduced quickly, and then you might not come back to that character for a good chunk of the book, but they are all important. I did struggle to keep them all straight at some points, but I generally struggle with that.

My only other critique would be that I wanted a little bit more from the ending. We spend so much time (literal centuries) getting to the conclusion that it felt a little rushed. I wanted to sit with the conclusion a little more. I know that this was originally written as a stand alone but is now the first in a trilogy so I am hoping that some of that will be resolved in the next book.

Overall, I really loved this book. It felt unique, fun, thoughtful and well written. It is hard to bring something new to the genre of sci-fi but I think that this novel did just that!

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maddie_can_read's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Aug 2024

I decided to reread because I read another Tchaikovsky book (Cage if Lost Souls) and it made me want to read the sequels to this book. A lot easier to get into this time, I didn't find it slow and I liked the characters a lot better. I found half the plot more compelling than the other half and that there was a bit of a mismatch in tension jumping back and forth

between the spider and human parts

. Also some parts were very difficult to visualize and I wished there was a bit more descriptions.

There's so much going on in the book that I wasn't bored rereading and I'd found that Ive forgotten a lot of the interesting details.

The most fun part of the reread was seeing themes across the author's works

like civilization destroying itself, things evolving, future generations loosing th technology of their ancestors, the vibe of like things just getting progressively worse/ a more realistic/ pessimistic view of future problems

--
Jan 2024 - 4.25/5
I had a super difficult time getting into this book but I'm glad I powered through because I ended up really enjoying it towards the end. I did find it a bit slow and a bit plodding throughout.

I had a difficult time vibing with the writing style at first. I think it was a combination of it being written in third person but then also being kind omniscient narrator (like they knew everything about past humanity -

like comparing the spider pandemic to the black plague

.

And I just could not connect with any of the characters until almost the half way point. ~~I don't think the author is great at characterization.~~

I kept going because I liked the premise and I read all these reviews talking about how weird (in a good way) the book was and just thought I'd keep going and give it some more time.

And wow, I loved it when things got weird! Having the structure of the book set up the way it is

spanning multiple generations

made it so some really interesting things could occur. Really liked how the two story-lines came to a head.

Lots of wtf moments

really was not expecting Arvana to turn away the last of humanity, the mutiny, the spiders holding a human captivity for decades, spider sexism, the captain wanting to become the ship and being kept alive by machines, the captain letting people out of some pods and them having generations of children that followed him like a cult leader, really loved the love story between the humans (how it was impacted by one of them staying out of their cold sleep for longer) and then the one between two of the spiders towards the end where the male sacrifices himself, and loved the twist/ fake-out at the end!

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