Tag: Adrian Tchaikovsky

First Impressions: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

It kills me to write this post, but I bounced *hard* off of Tchaikovsky’s lauded SF novel, Children of Time. I picked it up during an Audible sale several weeks ago, and coming off of Brandon Sanderson’s excellent (but looooooooooong) Oathbringer, it seemed like the perfect palate cleanser. Relatively short, totally different, and I’d never actually read anything of Tchaikovsky’s before.

However, this is one of those times when I can honestly look you in the eye and say, “It’s not you, it’s me.” There’s nothing egregious about Children of Time—in fact, I was immediately taken in by the generation ship aspect of the story (because I’m a sucker for social conflict generation ship stories), and Tchaikovsky’s writing and storytelling were clear and effective. There were other eight-legged reasons.

Children of Time is split across two converging plot lines. The first is a traditional generation ship/survivor story. A group of humans crash lands on an alien planet and has to learn to survive. The other half is about spiders. Imagine Spiderman. Now, imagine if Spiderman, instead of being a human who gains spider-like powers, was a spider who gained human-like sentience and intelligence through rapid, viral evolution. Sounds cool, right? Alongside the survivors are a group of intelligent, social spiders. A lot of people *loved* this aspect of the book, but I hit it like a brick wall and bounced off super hard.

So, if that concept sounds interesting (and I’m told it’s executed very well), jump right on in. Just wasn’t my cuppa.

My loss, I know.