Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

3 reviews

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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yuripiano's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

God, where do I even begin....
This is easily, easily one of my favorite books of all time, no questions asked.

The way that different points of view are written is so deeply interesting regardless of who the chapter is about, and the juxtaposition of evolving spiders with devolving humans and the question of what it means to be human is just... so. incredibly. good.  You really feel and pull for the spiders, and there's a sense of "humanity" tied to their un-humanness that's lacking in the actual humans that's super fascinating to read.  i feel like i could talk forever about the crew of the Gilgamesh contrasted with their predecessors and how that relates to the spiders and Kern - it's deeply fascinating and exciting and really thought provoking.


i don't think i can sing enough praises - i'm trying to come up with things to criticize, because every time i write a review here, i'm like "this book was okay!" and then i just bash the book to pieces, but...
the pacing is snappy, the characters are incredible, and the constant tension of feeling the three main points swirling like they're in a whirlpool and you're just waiting for them to converge is such a page turner!

i suppose, if i had to point something out, some metaphors and such were very spelled out... but, coming from the internal thoughts/point of view from the classicist a lot of the time, i felt that it was fine, and honestly, i didn't particularly feel like it was talking down to the reader either. 

At the end of the day, it's an incredible read, and easily the first book i would recommend to someone.  If this book were 2000 pages longer, it would be too short.  
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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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