Last year, I made a mission of trying to find a good science fiction book. After a recommendation from Garnt on the Trash Taste podcast (about 1 hour 10 minutes in), I found out about Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time. I was sold on the concept of intelligent spiders versus humans but it turned out to be a much deeper story about societal development, the human condition, and artificial intelligence. The story itself about a post-Earth humanity searching for a way to survive isn’t new but the story Tchaikovsky tells in Children of Time was so absorbing that I immediately picked up the sequels Children of Ruin and Children of Memory.
Children of Memory is probably my favorite book in the series and I feel its the story Tchaikovsky wanted to tell from the beginning. The characters are already established and he gets to explore them in this entry in the series. Whereas the stakes are really high in the previous two books, survival of the human race in the first entry and all sentient life in the universe in the second, in this book the stakes have never been lower – and I really loved that. By limiting the stakes to one offshoot colony of struggling humans, we learn more about how the new evolved human society/alliance works and also get insights into how Miranda, Kern, and other characters are continuing to progress. I can’t think of many series that have been able to pull off a stakes deescalation like this while still pushing the plot forward and keeping the reader’s interest.
As with the previous entries in the series, we get a history of how a newly enhanced species evolved. The crows are a great addition to an increasing menagerie of new species – and they present a fascinating guess at how an advanced crow society would work and how weird that would be. As with the spiders and octopuses before them, finding out more about the crows as the story goes on and how humans can communicate and cooperate with them is quite thought provoking when contrasted with normal humans operate (both in the real world and in Tchaikovsky’s world). The crows prove even more mysterious than the octopuses. Something I really liked about the third book was how one off-the-cuff remark about he crows at the beginning of the book develops into a deep philosophical question towards the end.
Tchaikovsky’s style where he presents an intriguing puzzle in the first part of the story, and then proceeds to explain the background of the puzzle in the next part, before weaving both stories together in a very satisfying payoff knot is also a reason I go through these books relatively quickly. This one does it a little differently and it’s really difficult for me to explain how without spoiling the whole book – so I won’t. Suffice to say, it’s a nice reward for those of us who have stuck with the series and have gotten used to Tchaikovsky’s way of telling stories. The story might seem a bit confusing at one point but it works – trust me!
This series was the best find of 2023. I also liked Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir also but what gives the Children of Time series its edge is the incredible word building and character development. On the whole it presents a very optimistic future based on a very pessimistic past – not an original concept in science fiction but it’s the best story based on this premise that I’ve read. It’s been years since I found a series of books that I’ve really liked. As soon as the next entry is released, I’ll be right on it.
