Children of Time

By: Adrian Tchaikovsky

Narrated by: Mel Hudson

Length: 16 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet.

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?

©2016 Adrian Tchaikovsky (P)2017 Audible Ltd

Critic reviews

" Children of Time is a joy from start to finish. Entertaining, smart, surprising and unexpectedly human." (Patrick Ness)

Easily one of the best sci-fi books EVER.

I've been a sci-fi fan for 30+ years. I've read all the classics, and every new sci-fi book that gets decent reviews. I'm also an extremely unforgiving critic. So when I tell you that this book is genius, understand that I am NOT just throwing that word around.

This book has it all: characters that you can care about, a captivating plot, and oh. my. god.... maybe the most clever and thoughtful exploration of an alien concept that I've ever encountered. I mean "alien" here in the sense of foreignness--beyond and outside the scope of our world.

I rushed to write this review the instant I'd finished the book, because I just had to sing its praises.

It was a fascinating story from the start. I was guardedly impressed by the novelty of the plot. At MANY places along the way, I was just blown away by the brilliance of the story; just knocked out by how insightful the author was in building a world that was so completely different from anything I'd ever read or imagined, and how masterfully and logically and rationally that world was expanded.

And normally when an author is great at world building, it's at the expense of other aspects of the novel--- but not here! Here we have realistic and sympathetic characters. Here we good dialog. Here we beautiful prose. Here we have divergence from expected tropes. Here we have fantastic pacing. Here we have a compelling narrative. Here we have a fantastic plot arc.

I cannot overstate how fantastic this book is. What a delight. What an absolute surprise. FIVE STARS IS NOT NEARLY ENOUGH.

Brilliant

Really well thought out very different and unique. The start may come off as slow but its worth it once things get going.

Absolutely fantastic book

This book is so well written and intelligent. For me, this was the perfect book. Fantastic characters, amazing plot. Great performance. I'd say more but I wouldn't want to spoil anything. One of the best books I have read in a long time, I needed a smart, thoughtful, and believable story like this.

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I didn't like the title, turned me off, something too simplistic about it. I didn't like the "sample clip". I didn't particularly find spiders interesting or care to learn about them. There was so many holes in the story about how they got in the situation they where in, but I let it go, and by about the 5th chapter I could overlook all the holes, because it was uniquely interesting. Unique conflict. Unique resolve. Characters where charming, unique and interesting. What I think modern sci fi, has to be difficult, tragic, extraordinary and hopeful, and if its written well enough you can look let go the plausibility of certain things, as you can with this.

It is also read beautifully. I have particular trouble with non-American accents, I either can't listen at all or I have to slow it down by a lot. Mel Hudson read so clearly, even in different voices, I didn't have any issue.

What other book might you compare Children of Time to and why?

Its hard to pinpoint what about "The Girl with All the Gifts " made me think of "Children of Time". Maybe the dystopian feel, and similar pace of action. A kind of scientific hopefulness as the themes to both, both had really inspiring and surprising and unique endings.

Which scene was your favorite?

The last scene, when the two species confront each other, is pretty brilliant.

A unique story of accelerated evolution

Children of Time won the 2016 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel and it is easy to see why. The story is rather unique despite the fact that the sci-fi concepts within are familiar ones: accelerated evolution, humanity seeking a new home after destroying Earth, cryostasis for long space journeys, and uploading one's persona into a computer, to name just a few. The story takes place in two main locales - a planet that has been terraformed by humanity for the sole purpose of running an accelerated evolution experiment and an ark ship that contains 500,000 humans in cryostasis looking for a new home. It is the evolutionary side of the story that is very unique and that makes things all the more interesting when the two threads finally converge.

The very beginning of the story sets the stage as we learn about the experiment to be conducted by Dr. Kurn and her engineered nanovirus that causes accelerated evolution to take place. Dr Kurn and her like-minded associates view this as a step forward for humanity as life from Earth is spread to other worlds and evolution is initiated in the manner of gods. Of course humanity is not united in this perspective and there are those among the population who oppose such arrogance and are willing to fight to the death to stop it from happening. These two points of view clash in a somewhat contrived start to the story that results in the unplanned outcome which is what makes this story so unique.

Suffice it to say that I quickly got over the contrived start and became very interested in how things progressed on Kurn's world. The manner in which Tchaikovsky reveals the evolution taking place is very well done. Although this book is far from perfect it was refreshing to experience such a unique story with an ending that did not disappoint. I definitely recommend it and understand why it won the award it did.

Mel Hudson also does an excellent job on the narration and makes it easy to keep track of all the different characters.

British accents are like nails on a chalkboard

If the story wasn't so good I wouldn't have been able to deal with the performers accent through the whole work.
In the end though, I don't share the author's assessment of the human race so the ending was incongruous for me. But an excellent story!

Excellent Book

Any additional comments?

Great sci-fi. Reminded me of Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. Highly recommended!

I'm an arachnophobe reading the this book

I am not sure if this book helped with my severe arachnophobia, but the story was pretty enjoyable. I have somewhat severe arachnophobia, I don't come up with a mental picture of spiders merely by talking about it.

Cool Story, too much foul language

The story was creative and well told. The only thing I didn’t like was how much swearing was there. It was unnecessary.

one of the best books I listen to audiobooks

if I tried to describe the book it would sound a little bit corny like if you try to explain somebody Game of Thrones that sounds dumb but trust me this is one of the best books I've ever read very intelligent cleverly written good story you'll like it