A review by maddie_can_read
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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!
Expand filter menu Content Warnings