Title Children of Time Series --- Author Adrian Tchaikovsky Cover Art --- Publisher PanMacmillan - 2015 First Printing PanMacmillan - 2015 Category Science Fiction Warnings None Main Characters Portia, Fabian, Bianca, Holsten, Lain Main Elements Terraforming Website ---

A race for survival among the stars... Humanity's last survivors escaped earth's ruins to find a new home. But when they find it, can their desperation overcome its dangers?

WHO WILL INHERIT THIS NEW EARTH?

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life.

But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.

Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?

SPIDERS IN SPAAAACE!

Couldn't help myself, but the thought of spiders in little silk space suits was actually kind of cute. So yes, you heard me right, this is a tale about spiders, but even if you're arachnophobic, I think you should give it a try. Tchaikovsky did an excellent job imaging how spider culture and technology would evolve. After all, they can barely hear, so they don't learn to speak with their non-existent voices but rather through gestures and rhythms tapped out on webs. And because of those webs, they avoid fire, so don't make much use of metals which require smelting. On the other hand being insects they understand chemicals and pheremones far more than we do.

And most interestingly, the females take the lead here. They are bigger, and they are cannibals, feeding off of males after mating with them. Now that's an awkward society to be male. And as intelligence increases, so does the desire to change, to seek equality.

And to figure out if that light orbiting your planet sending signals is, in fact, God.

In addition to watching the spiders evolve over thousands of years, we are also introduced to an Earth ark ship. See, we messed up the planet so badly that we're looking for a new home, in particular one of the worlds we attempted to terraform before we warred ourselves back into nearly the stone age. And this is one of the interesting aspects of the book, everything takes place across epic timelines of thousands of years. It gives time for a sub-light-speed craft to navigate between planets, and for a terraformed species to accidentally evolve all the way to being a space-faring race.

Being trapped in a tin can for millenia of course eventually leads to problems and disagreements amongst the crew. You get rebellions, you get cults, you eventually get a ship that is simply falling apart and desperation sets in. But to be honest, I wasn't too interested in the bits with the humans, it was the spiders that brought up the most interesting questions about society, perhaps because their society is so very different from ours.

And then the big question. Do you attempt to settle on another world where another sentient species already exists? Can you convince them you mean them no harm? Can you trust them that they mean no harm to you? Do you try to get along or do you try to wipe the out? Especially as you have no common frame of reference, even the concept of language between the two species is so very different. The fate of your entire species rests on your decision.

In the end, I didn't love the book nor did I dislike it. It had many interesting ideas and world building but in the end I didn't really care for any of the characters, human or otherwise.