Why I’m breaking my own rules for Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time

I told myself I was only going to review new books; because relevance! Because SEO rankings! Because of boring professional things like that. But all that suddenly seemed frankly less important than this stunner, as breathtaking, terrifying, devastating, mind-bending, ultimately redemptive, today as when it was published ten years ago – and perhaps even more relevant.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is a British author best known for his series Shadows of the Apt and for the series that opens with this book, Children of Time. He's a multi-Hugo Award and Arthur C. Clarke Award winner – and a qualified zoologist, which you'll quickly see the relevance of if you read this one.

Children of Time follows the remnants of the human race who have 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 civilisations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive.  

This is classic epic galactic sci-fi with some exquisite horror overtones. And before you dismiss it, know this: sci-fi, rather than the realm of the unreal and fanciful, is – especially when engaged with in this level of intellectual rigour – the most relevant of genres for those concerned with the destinations humanity is speeding towards with increasing velocity.

Its scope is large but its structure, employing short chapters switching back and forth between the spaceship and the Eden planet, a nice cliffhanger at the end of each one, is so teasing it maintains a cracking pace throughout.

In another structural feat, this plot encompasses thousands of years, but develops steady character arcs throughout these by way of two devices.

In the spaceship setting, the human characters can enter and exit suspension, effectively cold storage, waking to a different situation each time, so we can develop a relationship with them and share their overwhelm as their circumstances grow increasingly desperate.

On the Eden planet, suspension pods do not exist. So the author visits multiple generations, but each time three main characters share the names of their forebears, so although they actually represent descendants of their previous iterations, we have instant familiarity with their roles, priorities, constraints and motivations.

One is a a leader, brave, curious and clever, but constrained by all the things that constrain leaders. Another is the rebel – the pure intellect, the scientist. Another burns with a desire for social justice.

The author manages to make these non-human characters as finely developed and as sympathetic as the human ones – if not more so.

Along the way, a deft illustration of gender roles and the associated limits these impose on a species’ progress is elegantly metaphorical, surprising and one of the major thematic achievements of the novel, as well as a compelling subplot.

But the primary accomplishment of this book its representation of humanity’s apparent inability to untangle and progress past the cultural problems that are threatening to end life and nature, as we currently experience them, on this planet.

The ending forces you to hold your breath in terror and hope until the final pages, which come together managing to leave you both satiated and longing for the next in the series.

Read this if you love China Mieville or Andy Weir … or any tale featuring a monster that proves more human than its creators.

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