"Children of Ruin" by Adrian Tchaikovsky is an ambitious sequel that expands the cosmic scope introduced in "Children of Time." This installment delves into the complexities of interspecies communication and cooperation, taking us from terraforming planets to sentient octopuses. Tchaikovsky's storytelling skillfully juggles multiple viewpoints and timelines, offering a rich, philosophical read for any science fiction aficionado.

So how do you follow a much-loved SF novel like Children of Time? It would be very easy to simply repeat the format of Children of Time and show us another linear journey through evolution and progress. But braver and better series take risks and for me reading Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky for me has a much more interesting core theme – what is life and intelligence and how do we recognise it? This also has a different approach and tone creating a really engrossing reading experience.

As the Earth imploded through a mix of climate change, pollution and war a small group of Terraformers leave the Earth on a ship named the Aegean and travel to a remote star and system of planets to prepare it for colonists. But their leader Baltiel is shocked to find the planet they call Nod appears to have life in ways we have never seen before – the first ever alien life found everywhere. Deciding to catalogue this for the momentous discovery it is the team split into two and a different ice planet to be named Damascus is chosen for terraforming under the guidance of the introverted, but kind-hearted Senkovi who also has a cunning plan to use his favourite life form – the Octopus to learn and assist the process (using the uplift process devised by the famous Dr Avrana Kern). But all goes soon wrong – a computer virus from Earth’s final battles destroys a lot of their technology and Nod is found to have some life forms far more dangerous than anythign anyone has seen before

Many generations later a spaceship arrives crewed by the intelligent Portiid species (descended from spiders but much larger, thoughtful and technically advanced) and Humans who have put aside their differences and are working together to explore the universe. They arrive in a time of war, danger on all sides and frustratingly species who do not seem able to easily communicate. A small team are sent to investigate but it may not be enough, and danger could spread across the rest of the universe if no one is careful.

Initially Children of Ruin feels a more chaotic and dangerous story than Children of Time. Whereas there we had two plot lines of Humans and Portiids converging and along the way societies building or collapsing here Tchaikovsky gives us three plotlines. What happened on Nod and how it went so wrong; how Damascus moved from ice planet to a world where Octopods become the dominant lifeform and then our more familiar Portiid/Human crew finding it has all gone to hell. In many ways this is a story that really uses the Title – whereas the Portiids in the first book had the luxury of time to evolve and become the advanced life form we as human readers learnt to bond and emote with here the disruption of two storylines mean we arrive late to the party and have to try and make links with intelligences that are not recognisably human. In fact, for me the stand-out theme for this novel in the sequence is communication and our need to connect with others.

Tchaikovsky gives us two new intelligences one based on Octopods and one that is very much non-earth based. The Octopus storyline is fascinating as we have the challenge of creatures that live in the moment; wear their heart on their sleeve (or skin) and have three intelligences within themselves making decisions often at odds to one another. They’re almost to human and Portiids logical and then very quickly appear not - changing minds at a moment's notice. We see they’re very advanced and yet also very to our eyes chaotic. Their situation as we find is on the brink of destruction but how can you bond with people who do not think like you do? Here the non-neurotypical view of intelligence has to be explored and I love the fact that our crew has to learn to accept that this is who the species are. The idea we can only bond to intelligence like our own really is sensibly challenged and I found this very thought-provoking.

Our second strand is the true alien. In many ways there are section here of horror. Our poor human scientists are in the wrong place at the wrong time; isolated and possibly doomed. Tchaikovsky has the space mission in trouble storyline and then makes things even harder. Importantly we get to care about this group and their endless work to try and survive but ultimately, they meet something no one has seen before. Here we get a form of life that just speaks to human culture as just inherently wrong; and we get added body horror to the mix too. I’ve seen Tchaikovsky able to create horror before and there are scenes here of genuine disquiet especially as we enter the storyline’s final phase on top of which they deliver poignance as we watch one scientist try to teach the Octopods all he knows and yet they never quite get to bond – imagine never quite getting to communicate with someone you strongly believe should and can talk to you. This storyline is bittersweet and very important to creating the tension that races through the final act.

The last and important arc is our Portiid-Human alliance. Here it is great fun for the reader as Tchaikovsky allows to explore a new enhanced culture. They all get along but also spiders and Humans still not quite communicating. In fact, we see two groups exploring learning language (the use of vibrations and legs) and actual mind memory transfer. These are both fascinating ideas, but all come together in an unexpected direction. The latter crucial character is how Avrana Kern has developed from antagonistic scientist to a self-aware artificial intelligence and yet Nod possibly offers her the chance to discover something like herself. This storyline pushes at our nature for discovery, to seek a mystery out and solve it. But also and importantly to build bridges and links with the world we are part of.

In all these storylines we get the issue of communication. How to get you to experience the world as others see it. How to make you be understood and perhaps that is the greatest part of recognising intelligent life it is how we learn to recognise life and also respond to it – the act of empathy. Not taking things because we want them to serve us. This could very easily have just been a wham bam space adventure with monsters to tackle and worlds to save but the story becomes bigger and also has a bigger subject can you learn to do or be better than you are? Children of Ruin builds upon Children of Time a great deal and challenges the reader by far less recognizably human forms of life that we may initially shy away from (and just consider that by this book we see spiders as like us. But ultimately, I find this novel a hopeful tale that we can do better. I am hugely impressed and highly recommend it.

Superb in every way. Tchaikovsky takes the world of Children of Time and runs with it, creating something spectacular. An incredible read.

I feel that we could have lived without Children f Ruin but it is good the book exits. Tchaikovsky's novel preserves every characteristics from his previous novel, and also gives many new ideas and thoughts to his "Children of"-universe. It shows that how creative he is, even a closed storyline can be continued if you have many exciting ideas to fullfill your existing fiction world.

Children of Time works so brilliantly as a standalone that I was kind of worried going into this. There was no need to be, however. Children of Ruin has everything I enjoyed from the previous instalment and then threw a few more things into the mix, the result of which is a complex, scientific, thrilling, and occasionally chilling sci-fi epic.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is fast becoming one of my favourite writers. He writes the sort of SF that makes you wish you could write it yourself. Only I have completely zero scientific knowledge...

Ah well, back to the book.

Children of Ruin is the sequel to Children of Time. I do not recommend you read them out of order.

Book 1 dealt with intelligent spiders... Book 2 features octopuses/octopi, the spiders are still around, and Tchaikovsky has a few surprises up his sleeve too.

We begin with a team of oddball scientists (always a favourite) off to terraform a likely looking planet before humanity destroys itself. One is more concerned with the quiet planet they are developing, another with his pet octopi which he is gradually helping to evolve over the generations.

But the quiet planet has its own secrets, and soon the work they were set to do turns into something else entirely.

Meanwhile, humanity and the Portiids (spiders) have been rubbing along together nicely - they've learned to communicate well with one another, for the most part. They're exploring the stars when they find some strange signals, and then run into an intelligence (or two) far stranger than anything they've encountered before...

Another great read, though it does tread some similar ground to that found in Children of Time. I didn't find the octopi as compelling as the spiders, partly because they were (and probably realistically) far harder to understand. Consequently, I've dropped a star to four out of five. But it's still a remarkable achievement.

This was an intriguing book, and a good sequel to Children of Time. I would say it needs to be read in order, as there is a lot of information and background detail that would not make as much sense without having read the first book. It is a fascinating premise (again, fairly similar to the first book)- what if octopuses evolved like humans into a technological society? In Children of Time, this occurred with spiders, and was a really interesting premise to explore the ways that a society could start with no pre-conceived human ideas, and how humans would interact with them. Similarly, here, humans end up having to rely on the octopuses for help, and a lot of the action is around trying to translate between the octopus' colour signalling and emotion-led society, human and spider understanding.
I enjoyed the first part of the book, which explained how all this came to be, but the story is so long and technical that maybe the second part, where humans and evolved octopuses are struggling to survive in space, could almost have been a separate book. It was just a little bit of a struggle to maintain my interest. One for fans of Neal Stephenson e.g. Seveneves. It was well written with lots of fascinating ideas and creeping tension.

Good writing but it was too long and very similar to the previous book in the ending. I enjoyed it for the most part but prefer the spiders to the octopuses as they're more understandable as characters.

I love octopuses.  They are beautiful, strange creatures.  Probably the closest thing we humans can get to the truly alien.  They live in a different milieu and come from a radically different branch of the evolutionary tree.  They are also clever, resourceful and undoubtedly sentient.  This is why I was super-excited when I heard that Adrian Tchaikovsky's sequel to his Clarke-Award winning Children of Time would focus on uplifted cephalopods.  And I was not disappointed - this was a novel that I enjoyed much more than its predecessor.


Children of Ruin (review copy from Tor) picks up where Children of Time left off.  The uplifted spiders from Kern's World in the first novel are now space explorers, with their domesticated Human compatriots.  They are travelling to a distant star system that was one of the destinations of one of the original Earth colony ships, following up on signals received that suggest there may be a surviving colony.  What they find is a system on the brink of collapse, with one water world choked and polluted, another in strict quarantine and a derelict space ship.  Space-faring octopuses live in water-filled bubble ships, in loose and chaotic communities.  The story is cut with flashbacks that show the Earth colony team that came to terraform the system, slowly revealing the disaster that befell them and the old Earth. 


This is the Year of the Octopus.  Books like Other Minds and The Soul Of An Octopus are best-sellers, showcasing the strange creatures we share our planet with.  In Tchaikovsky's hands, the octopuses are all but unknowable, struggling to make themselves understood to Humans and spiders, and frustrated as a result.  These are creatures on permanent transmit with no filters, through their movement in the water and their colour- and texture-changing skins.  Clever and creative, they adapt and innovate, but their non-hierarchical society runs on individual battles for dominance.  Tchaikovsky's octopuses are compellingly Other. 


The story is a pleasing one of co-operation and collaboration, rather than conflict and dominance.  Only by working together can Humans, spiders and the AI consciousness of Avrana Kern communicate with the octopuses.  And only with the help of the octopuses can they engage meaningfully with the sentient slime mould antagonist that risks the system.  And that slime mould delivers some chilling moments of pure horror in the body snatchers mode. 


This is a novel that champions evolution and co-existence.  Messages we should learn to pay attention to. 


Goodreads rating: 4*

A great sequel to read! Didn't quite enjoy it as much as the first installment. But still very enjoyable

Children Of Ruin is the sequel to Adrian Tchaikovsky’s superlative Children Of Time. It takes place in the same universe, a few (human) generations after the first book. As such, fair warning: This review may contain spoilers for Children of Time.

The story takes place across viewpoints and times, and switches between them with a sinuous ease. In one, we find a crew of terraformers, sent out to make something habitable from chunks of water ice and rock, waiting for the colony ships that will surely follow. Our central focus on this crew is Senkovi, a man who has very little time at all for other people. He’s quite good with machines though, and also with cephalopods. Much like the ill-starred Avra Kern from the first book, Senkovi is gently playing god; introducing a virus to his octopi which may make them more intelligent, more sentient, even, than before. Senkovi’s octopi are a triumph. Not only for him, but for us. Watching his struggles to teach them to deal with their new intellects over generations of breeding, watching him try and bridge a gap in understanding carries an impressive emotional weight and depth. The other terraformers think they’re just getting some handy creatures to maintain the terraforming systems on a water ball, but we know they can be something more than that. It’s an exploration of the alien, of the way humanity interacts with the strange, strives to make the unknowable knowable. At the same time, Senkovi is taking risks, and you may want to go through the pages and stop him before everything gets out of hand. There’s a skill to this kind of characterisation – giving us a fully realised person, whom we can empathise with, even sympathise with, even as we see them step down some very dangerous roads indeed. It’s a big idea, this – the idea of people creating new intelligence – and it’s approached respectfully and thoughtfully. Senkovi and his relationship with his children will make you think, even as they struggle to become less of an enigma to each other.

To put it mildly, the terraformer’s efforts to create a newly habitable world do not go entirely to plan.

I don’t want to get into it for fear of spoilers, but to skirt around it: this is a wonderful exploration of humanity, absolutely. Of the way it reaches out and tries to understand, and the way it reacts under pressure. The way small group environments are a few bad decisions and failed systems away from catastrophe The way we’re a voice in the wilderness, looking for something that answers back. It’s a story which, in some ways, is about hope. But it’s also a different kind of story– oh yes. A story of how quickly things can go wrong, a story of insidious loss, of escalating conflict, of desperate measures and hard choices. While we’re watching Senkovi try and match wills with his commander, and train his octopi into sentience, we’re also seeing how things could slide out of control. There’s a delightful slow burn horror here, one which kept me turning pages, albeit with the occasional shudder. The terraformers, deep in the past of Children of Time, are eminently human, and eminently fallible. It’s to Tchaikovsky’s credit that he approaches some big themes in this sequence – who we are, what we want, what were willing to do to survive, and what our legacy might be – and then wraps it around and throughout a compelling character drama, and one which had great success in evoking visceral emotional reactions. This is a book that doesn’t pull any punches, emotionally or narratively.

The other strand of the story occurs further in the future, a few generations after Children of Time. Our spiders and their humans are reaching out now, looking to see if they are really all there is in the universe. Hunting for meaning and communication from the stars. And when they find it, they’ll go and investigate, because that’s what they do.

What they find when they do – well, again, no spoilers. But Tchaikovsky has a talent for showing us an alien viewpoint, making it relatable but other, a lived experience very different from our own. This is a story about different kinds of intelligence trying to talk to each other, to stop talking past each other, and, preferably, to do so without everyone killing each other. The spiders are still the spiders – forthright, dealing with humanity on the one hand, and their own social dilemma’s on the other (the exploration of the struggle against sexism in a species where the females have been known to eat a disagreeable male was a spot of genius), and in the gripping hand, trying to handle whatever new thing the universe casts at them next. There’s people too, of course – complicated, slightly awkward people, doing their best to get by, to reach out to their colleagues, to bridge the gap between humanity and Other. Oh, and, well, there’s Kern. The AI that was once a god, like Senkovi, and is now something less than a person, and struggling so hard, wanting so much, to know what that’s like.

This is a story that weaves beautifully across these two strands of time, two voices of humanity working to understand the Other, and the rewards and perils that can be presented thereby. . I’m not sure I can usefully articulate how well done this book is, but…it is. The prose is tight, pragmatic, and utterly engrossing, drawing you into the creaking octopus tanks, the recycled air of the terraformers ships, before dropping you into strange worlds, with people struggling to convince each other that they’re people.

It’s a big story, which examines some really big ideas – the nature of intelligence, the nature of personhood, the sense of self – but within an immediate context. We feel for Senkovi and his struggle, we feel the excitement and terror of the terraforming team. We see our spider-human expeditionary force bicker over academic credit, and throw their lives to the wind to help each other, and face the strange, the unknown, together. This is a story which will let you know its characters, possibly better than you might like, will get them to feel alive, will have their choices and their decisions become things you feel in your heart, in your gut. That combination, of a vivid, detailed, innovative universe, populated by strange, wonderful, terrifying people and a story which will grab hold of you and not let go until it’s done…that combination, blended up with some really clever exploration of Big Idea’s, makes for a fantastic story, which is what this is.

Coming from Children Of Time you may be wondering – can this be as good as its predecessor? Is it worth the wait? And I would say yes and yes again. Children of Ruin is top-notch sci-fi, thoughtful and action-packed in equal measure, and you owe it to yourself to go and read it, right now.

Children of Ruin expands well on the story initially told in Children of Time, but still manages to hold onto the things I loved from the first book. I can go on and on about how brilliant the storytelling in Children of Time is, as well as the incredibly intricate way he manages to show an entire culture evolving from primal hunters to a space-faring society. I absolutely loved the way that the spiders were presented and how they evolved in the first book, and was so worried that we wouldn’t get anything as interesting in Children of Ruin. However, he manages to show a similar evolution of a non-human society that doesn’t feel like a rehashing of the Portiid society. I loved the way life was explored, expanded on, and evolved on both Nod and Damascus. I loved that this book had so many horror elements to it. I loved the way the Portiids and humans interacted not only among themselves, but toward a new species. I loved the backstory of the terraformers. Basically, I just loved this book.

We get a good mix of our favourite Portiid descendants -- Fabian, Portia, and Bianca -- as well as human descendants of the Gilgamesh’s crew. It was so interesting to see how humans and Portiids are still getting to know each other and adjusting to each other’s customs, despite the generations between first contact and their present situation. Seeing them, particularly Helena and Portia, attempt to communicate with each other and with the the new species was just fabulous.

If you liked Children of Time, I really think you’ll enjoy Children of Ruin. Although it feels a lot like the first book in terms of general plot and story structure, Children of Ruin introduces so many new elements and continues to expand and explore familiar themes. Children of ruin combines elements of creeping horror with some of my favourite science fiction tropes -- space exploration and first contact. Throw in a healthy dose of linguistics, and you have this absolutely brilliant book.

Bigger than the first book in the saga, Children of Ruin has more timelines, more insects, more octopus, more sense of wonder and more of everything you could have been expecting. It is still a bit long book in some of the chapters, but is much more well balanced that Children of Time.

Although it is supposed to be independent for the first one, my strong opinion is that you must read the first one before entering this new book. Otherwise you might feel a bit lost sometimes.

Highly recomended. One of the top books of the year, for sure.

I have waited for what feels like an eternity for the second book in the Children of Time series by critically acclaimed science fiction writer Adrian Tchaikovsky whose name has become synonymous with epic adventure and high-quality, intelligent SF. Being someone who is terrified by spiders in real life the presence of gigantic sentient spiders was a shock to the system, but after discovering they were a lot more friendly than their Earthly counterparts I realised they were a stroke of genius. This follow-up is just as good as CoT, but I found some of the characters much more relatable and engaging and the story and characters both deepen strongly in this instalment.

The introduction of octopuses to the cast is an inspired choice and they rank as probably the most likeable here with their continued mission to discover whether spaceships are made from anything particularly tasty! They are really the cutesy part of the plot. The multiple points of view, a method I'm not that fond of due to the usual poor execution, works well with seamless switching between them creating a beautifully rounded reading experience. The writing remains as absorbing as Children of Time and the worldbuilding is even more incredible. It's a tome of a novel, but one I flew through and the complex intricacy of the plot is challenging but ultimately spectacular providing you invest in it enough. Many thanks to Tor for an ARC.

Once more, this is an ambitious, well-written epic adventure featuring humans, spiders and octopuses all as intelligent, sentient beings. Not only does this book encompass three species and convincingly depict their struggles to communicate with each other and amongst themselves, it sprawls across a brain-achingly long timespan. Furthermore, it does so whilst fracturing the timespan, so that some of it is told out of sequence…

I am a solid fan of Tchaikovsky’s work and familiar with the recurrent themes in his writing. I particularly love his knack of giving us unintended consequences, which is exactly what happens when a bored, rather lonely terraforming scientist decides to uplift a species of octopus to act as maintenance crews to the underwater equipment altering the planet for human use. No one writes non-human species better, in my opinion. I was completely convinced by what drove the spiders and the octopus societies, while the humans caught up in the middle of the crisis were also convincingly portrayed.

You might be sensing a but – and yes… there is one. For all that, I found the first half of this book rather a trudge. It might well be me – right now I’m tired and extremely stressed, although that doesn’t usually impact upon my reading. But while I was enjoying the slices of the adventure, I found the scrambled timeline really frustrating and at times, difficult to follow.

Once the stakes were clear and the action lined up for the desperate denouement, which was entirely gripping and held me throughout, the book rolled forward to a triumphant conclusion that will leave me pondering what happened for weeks and months to come. Tchaikovsky’s books tend to do that to me – it’s why I love reading them so much.

However, this one was a struggle and while it probably is more me than the book, I have to be honest about my reading experience. However, don’t be put off – especially if you loved Children of Time. Recommended for fans of well-written, first contact adventures with big, thought-provoking themes. The ebook arc copy of Children of Ruin was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest opinion of the book.
7/10

Let me talk about Adrian Tchaikovsky for a moment: I'm always surprised to find that he's not selling books as though they were hot cakes fresh from the oven. Possibly, because he's so versatile, that not only is each book a completely new adventure, Tchaikovsky switches genres as if it were no big deal.

He's written some brilliant science fiction, an epic high fantasy series that spans ten volumes, but also many standalones. There's even a shifter saga. Personally, I recommend Dogs of War if you're into science fiction and Guns of the Dawn if you're into fantasy to get a taste of his style.

Children of Time won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2016, and deservedly so. It's one of the best science fiction novels I've ever read. And I say that as someone who is afraid of spiders, and damn if that book isn't filled with spiders.

Now, here's the sequel. Does it hold up?

Yes, yes, it does. I'd give it 4.75 stars. I'll let you know in a bit, why I've chopped off 0.25 of the fifth star.

Children of Ruin is a fantastic book, that I ploughed through in two days because I couldn't put it down. It's got many twists and turns, wonderfully odd characters and a ton of evolutionary science. The cast is diverse, but it isn't a plot point. Some people just happen to be gay or asexual, because they are, and that's how it should be.

About halfway through, I was on the edge of my seat, almost ready to put the book into the freezer, so nothing bad could happen. I yelled at my Kindle, cursed the fact my other half wasn't reading it yet, and that I couldn't discuss what was going on with anyone.

This is one gripping story and the tension does not let up until the very end. The world building is some of the best, and you can tell that hours of research went into this book. Everything is explained with great care, in words that everyone can understand.

Its themes are uplifting and positive, but one stands out in particular: collaboration. People working together, solving problems together. People not fighting each other, and people not destroying what they find as they explore the universe. How refreshing to read a book where different species work together, work to understand each other better, research how to improve their communication.

It is such an important topic, and I love how Tchaikovsky handles it.

Why not five stars, you ask? Because ultimately, this book didn't surprise me as much as Tchaikovsky novels usually do. He took a very successful book, Children of Time, and essentially told the same story again. He did so brilliantly, and it's a gripping book I'll recommend for years to come, but ultimately it tells a very similar story to Children of Time.

Then again, this world is in desperate need of more books where people collaborate and work together. I highly recommend Children of Ruin to every science-fiction fan and can't wait to see what Tchaikovsky writes next.

Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Children of Ruin is the sequel novel to Children of Time and so you really need to have read the earlier novel first. In fact, if you haven’t read it, I urge you to do so. Science fiction, in my opinion, doesn’t get any better than Children of Time. It was one of my two top books of 2015 and remains one of my favourite books that I’ve ever read. I couldn’t wait to read Children of Ruin! This review assumes that you’ve read Children of Time and don’t mind hearing a little about what has happened before.

A crew has left Kern’s World and it’s a curious mix of human beings, descended from those who arrived on the Gilgamesh, and a number of the planet’s dominant species – spiders. They work closely together, each involved in experiments to improve communication between human and spider. And overseeing them all on their journey to seek out other life among the stars is Kern, a curious mix of human thought and ship technology. Once a scientist and terraformer, Kern is now an AI of sorts, whose chief concern is the care for the spiders she helped to evolve. But now, with humans aboard her ship, Kern is reminded of the humanity she’s lost, of the human vision and perspective she misses. But their expedition is put in jeopardy when they discover another form of life in another solar system. This species is at war with one another but their attention soon turns to the new arrivals and their reaction is hostile.

Another terraforming vessel has arrived in a system with a large planet, orbited by a moon covered in ocean. The planet, which they name Nod, is covered in mysterious life forms while the moon, Damascus, looks ripe for terraforming. And so, while one team studies Nod, the other sets to work on Damascus, evolving another species from Earth to help with the process. But it is on Nod that the greatest threat can be found, something that puts everything in peril. As one life evolves, another, humanity, might have reached its end.

Children of Ruin is a worthy sequel to Children of Time. I don’t think that anything can equal the first novel’s depiction of the extraordinary evolution of life on Kern’s World, but in Children of Ruin we are treated to some similar themes, as now it is the turn of the octopus to rise beyond its perimeters. The relationship of the octopus or octopi (the term is a topic for debate in the novel) to their ‘maker’ is so well drawn, while the character of the octopus is very different to that of the spiders. Again, Adrian Tchaikovsky explores some big themes about the nature of identity, memory, exploration, consciousness and self-awareness, the fate of Earth and humans, and the nature of life itself – what it means to be alive.

As the novel moves between its two strands, one set in the past and one in the present, we are taken to new worlds and there we encounter wonder but also terror. There are some genuinely frightening scenes here. Life isn’t always beautiful and the struggle to survive can be desperate. This drives the book on, giving it thrills, extreme action, horror, as well as moments of reflection and plenty of fascinating science.

This is engrossing storytelling and incredible worldbuilding. It may even alter the way in which you view life around you. The mix of science and drama is well balanced, engaging both the reader’s heart and mind. This is science fiction of the highest order, taking us to new worlds while illuminating the human condition. A stunning and rewarding read.

Other reviews
Children of Time
With C.B. Harvey and Malcolm Cross – Journal of the Plague Year

“I'd like to be under the sea
In an octopus' garden with you.” - ‘Octopus Garden’, Richard Starkey.

This SF novel features evolved octopuses, which made me very happy. Such amazing creatures.

First though my thanks to Pan Macmillan/Tor for an eARC via NetGalley of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s ‘Children of Ruin’ in exchange for an honest review.

This is a follow up to his award winning ‘Children of Time’ set in the same universe though with new characters facing fresh challenges.

I don’t feel that I can adequately summarise this novel as it is epic in scale. However, in very brief terms it involves a group of terraformers sent to a distant solar system to prepare it for colonists. Yet when they arrive it turns out that the planet is already teeming with life creating a dilemma. In addition, one of the crew has brought along genetically enhanced octopuses that he has plans for.

There’s another thread set many years in the future that has humans and intelligent spiders (!) on an exploratory mission to find other inhabitable planets and signs of life. These sections link to ‘Children of Time’. They come to the planetary system and encounter the now evolved octopuses and discovers the fate of the original expedition.

I hadn’t read ‘Children of Time’ before reading this, which did leave me a little off balance at the start though reading some review summaries and dipping into my Kindle edition helped me feel more acclimatised.

The novel is very much hard science fiction including a great amount of biology. There was plenty to appreciate here in its exploration of interaction with alien life forms especially the negotiations with the octopuses. Cephalopods are so fascinating. Also, loved the brief HHGttG reference!

There was also elements of horror in the encounters with something very unsettling on the surface of the planet. The kind of eeriness as in the Doctor Who episode ‘Silence in the Library’ so certainly felt the hairs on back of my neck tingling.

I expect that it will be nominated for SF awards this coming year. However, I would recommend reading them in order for maximum appreciation.

I plan to return to this for a reread (or listen) once I have read ‘Children of Time’

In Children of Time’s sequel, when Earth’s terraforming mission finds a world they call Nod, the intended transformation of the planet does not take place as expected. Then as Earth succumbs to catastrophe and contact with it is lost the decision is made to terraform a nearby moon and explore Nod more thoroughly. The decision to explore Nod will have catastrophic consequences for the members of the expedition. Meanwhile expedition member Disra Senkovi’s cephalopod experimental subjects develop into a legacy that no one could have anticipated. Then the descendants of Dr Avrana Kern’s mission appear. It is time for a potentially fatal showdown. But what will that mean for the future of the humans and the portiids, the beneficiaries of Kern’s legacy.

Children of Time was always going to be a hard act to follow, but Adrian Tchaikovsky has once again written a novel featuring an evolutionary story with interactions between humans and non-human protagonists which makes for a fascinating read.

It’s hard to think compassionately about an enormous spider in close proximity, but there’s a touching tenderness between some of the portiids and their human counterparts which really adds an interesting layer to the story. Although drawing the reader in through the developing relationships, Tchaikovsky stays true to the nature of the non-human participants and never anthropomorphises them. This adds a particular frisson because although you feel invested in this futuristic society, as a human reader you’re never left completely in a comfort zone of thinking you’ll know exactly what the non-human characters will do next.

By introducing the cephalopods who are communicating through colour patterns which the portiids and humans must learn to correctly interpret, Tchaikovsky has added not only a new participant in the story of species development, but one which might turn out to be friend or foe, depending on how effective the humans and portiids communicate with them. Certainly it is vital to develop a working understanding of the nuances of the light and colour language if they are to understand the complex society of the cephalopods and persuade them to overcome the all-pervasive and terrifying adversary unleashed from the world of Nod. Not to do so will spell disaster not only for Kern’s group, but also for Senkovi’s legacy.

This fragile balancing act of potential alliance, or war, as the two groups encounter one another and feel their way through the language barrier, understanding the way the different societies work and the ever-shifting balances of power, is at the core of the story.

As usual the author relishes a many-stranded narrative in which the strands in some way all link to one another. With Dr Avrana Kern as a very interactive AI, the reader has plenty to keep them occupied.

As with Children of Time, Children of Ruin’s complex plot means this is a story to be read again and see more with subsequent readings.

This was a fantastic sequel to Children of Time. It did take me a little while to get back into the world and there were definitely sections that went over my head a bit but I still really enjoyed this. If you enjoy sci-fi then I would highly recommend this book, but you would definitely need to read Children of Time before reading this book.