There were things that I really, really loved about this book, and things that I found extremely frustrating. Overall, though, I enjoyed it very much, and found that the story stuck with me long after finishing it.
First off, the good parts. The science fiction elements are really amazing, especially the evolutionary world-building of the uplifted spiders and their civilization. It is very difficult to write aliens that are relatable and sympathetic, but who are also convincingly alien, and not just humans with some weird Star Trek facepaint on their foreheads. By the time the spiders reach the space age, they are fantastically alien—and yet, the development of their strange civilization progresses quite reasonably. There are basic, foundational inventions we take for granted (like the wheel) that the spiders never develop at all, and likewise, some of the key foundational innovations of the spider civilization are things that humans have never accomplished, and are unlikely to accomplish either. By the time they get to space, it’s really wild.
But more than that, the spiders make for some really great characters. Each section follows the story of some great spider whose life changed the course of their history, starting just a couple of generations after the beginning of the uplift and culminating in their contact with humanity. And all of these stories are really great! I always loved reading the parts about the spiders, not only because they were so fascinatingly alien, but also because they were so endearing. Some of them really moved me, especially toward the end. Stories of courage and sacrifice that really punch you in the gut and stick with you.
As for the frustrating parts, it almost always had something to do with the humans. First of all, the future of humanity is really, really bleak in this book—which, if that was the only thing, wouldn’t have been so bad. But the really frustrating thing was that all of the humans who were in a position of power were megalomaniacal psychopaths obsessed with delusions of their own quasi-godlike powers. In fact, all of the humans seemed to be either (1) psycopaths, (2) idiots, (3) pawns, or (4) some combination of all three. Seriously, the people who were tasked with saving the human race were exactly the wrong kind of people you would want to have that job. It got to be so frustrating that I had to put the book down for a while, return it to the library, and check it out later.
And I wish I could say that this aspect of the book strained credulity… but the trouble is that it really didn’t. If the Earth became uninhabitable, and the last great hope of the human race lay with a handful of people commanding one last mission to the stars, I could totally see a bunch of idiots and psychopaths ending up in charge. Just look at the wonderful job our elected officials have done in handling the current pandemic, let alone everything else that’s made 2020 the year from hell. If anything, Tchaikovsky’s characters aren’t hypocritical and psychopathic enough.
Perhaps my biggest issue with this book was that the main human viewpoint character, whose throughline was tied all of the other aspects of the book together into a plot, wasn’t himself actually driving the plot, but was more just a passenger character who happened to be along for the ride. Kind of like Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. Which isn’t necessarily a problem unto itself—after all, To Kill a Mockingbird is still a really fantastic book—but the fact that he didn’t seem to have any agency at all, but was just a pawn in the games of the real power players of the story, just made all of the frustrating parts of the book that much more frustrating.
But the ending turned all of that around. Seriously, it’s one of the best twist endings I’ve read in a science fiction book, and made everything leading up to it worthwhile. It wasn’t quite enough to bump it up to a five-star for me, but it was enough to bump it up from a very mixed three-star to a four-star that I can solidly recommend. If, like me, you find that you love the spider parts of the story but can barely get through the human parts, stick it out to the end, and it will all be worthwhile.
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
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?
