Paperback, 597 pages
English language
Published May 14, 2019 by Orbit.
The astonishing sequel to Children of Time, the award-winning novel of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet.
Thousands of years ago, Earth's terraforming program took to the stars. On the world they called Nod, scientists discovered alien life - but it was their mission to overwrite it with the memory of Earth. Then humanity's great empire fell, and the program's decisions were lost to time.
Aeons later, humanity and its new spider allies detected fragmentary radio signals between the stars. They dispatched an exploration vessel, hoping to find cousins from old Earth.
But those ancient terraformers woke something on Nod better left undisturbed.
And it's been waiting for them.
Tchaikovsky's Children Of Series focuses on the lifeforms left behind by mankind's self-destruction. The sentient spiders from Children of Time are back, and are exploring a solar system caught in a civil war. One of science fiction's strengths is being able to imagine other beings, and Tchaikovsky's depictions of their life and thoughts are excellent here as well.
The alien development in Children of Ruin wasn't quite as good as the Portid chapters of "Children of Time", but the overall pacing of the book was much better with no boring human chapters to break up the palp-quivering goodness of the Portid and Cephalopod chapters. The ending of the book, despite sharing a similar flavor to the first book, still hits just as hard. These-of-We are looking forward to going on another adventure with the third book.
What a great book. In my last update, I mentioned not being surprised about where the story was at that point, but almost immediately after writing that the story took a wild turn that I didn't see coming at all. The last half of the book took so many twists and turns, making for some very exciting reading. The past couple of days I had a hard time using my free time for anything other than reading this book, it was that captivating.
Children of Ruin builds off its predecessor, Children of Time, and takes the saga to new heights. I can't wait to dive into the final book of the series, Children of Memory, and see how it all wraps up.
I quickly read through Children of Time twice and expected something similar from the second book in the series. I have to admit that I struggled to even finish it - something which seldom happens for me. While there the first book had some interesting characters which were described in some detail, I admit that not a single character from the second book draw my attention and I had trouble to remember who was who when they appeared again. The first book also lived from the looming disaster on old earth which gave the whole story around the crew of the Gilgamesh a strong purpose. There is nothing in this book which drives the story forward and the end - once finally reached- leaves no longing for a third book in the series.
Decent read! Unexpectedly enjoyed having previously read one of the author's reference books (if you have gotten into Children of Ruin you might be able to guess which topic it concerns :) Less bombastic storyline than Children of Time, a larger focus on cognition in general
