Children of Strife

The unmissable next instalment of the highly acclaimed Children of Time series, from award-winning master of science fiction Adrian Tchaikovsky

By: Adrian Tchaikovsky

They thought they’d found refuge.
But this paradise became their prison.

Centuries ago, a maverick terraforming team played God with a distant planet. Out of their vanity and spite, something terrible and unexpected arose.

Generations later, tormented scientist Alis is among the crew of the research vessel that rediscovers this lost outpost. But Alis wakes from nightmares of her own making to an all-too-real catastrophe on board. The rest of the crew has vanished – leaving only Cato, the belligerent mantis-shrimp captain, and Kern, the ship’s AI.

Searching for their lost fellows, Alis and Cato must venture into the darkness of the planet below. What did those ancient terraformers unleash? And will their last surviving crewmate become a greater threat than the world itself?

Praise for Adrian Tchaikovsky

‘Brilliant science fiction and far-out world-building’
- James McAvoy

‘One of the most interesting and accomplished writers in speculative fiction’
- Christopher Paolini

‘Magnificent’
- Ian McDonald

Children of Time won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel w/c 24 August 2016

Critic reviews

Tchaikovsky is the break-out star of contemporary British SF

Tchaikovsky is writing modern classics and you should start reading them as soon as possible (Tade Thompson, author of Rosewater)

Alien Clay is convincing, compelling on human and cosmic levels, and unputdownable. With work like this, Adrian Tchaikovsky is fast becoming the voice of his generation in British SF (Stephen Baxter, author of the Xeelee Sequence)

The central concept unravels itself in a manner that is both deeply satisfying and not at all predictable. He truly is one of our finest writers of SF right now. The whole was an excellent story told with Adrian's trademark skill and flair (James Oswald, author of The Rest is Death)

Adrian Tchaikovsky: king of the spiders, master world-builder and asker of intriguing questions. His books are packed with thought-provoking ideas (as well as lots of spiders; did I mention the spiders?). One of the most interesting and accomplished writers in speculative fiction (Christopher Paolini, author of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, on Shards of Earth)

[Adrian Tchaikovsky] writes incredibly enjoyable sci-fi, full of life and ideas (Patrick Ness, author of The Knife of Never Letting Go)

A thoughtful, sweeping space adventure (SFX Magazine on Shards of Earth)