I loved children of time so much. I felt more attached to Holsten and lain as characters but I preferred the spider chapters much more as a whole. I found myself siding with the spiders over the humans despite my like for Holsten and Lain although I was extremely happy with the ending.
Love this series so much. I think book one is some of the best scifi of the last 20yrs. Check out Cage of Souls too. It's really cool and the setting is so vivid. If you ask me, the jungle is the creepiest location possible, and this jungle has personality.
Haven't read this or seen any of your videos before but god damn this was really well done. More than maybe any other book youtuber I've come across, you sound like you REALLY know what you're talking about. Not that the average booktuber is dishonest or anything but man it really feels like you truly have thought about and honestly believe everything you're saying. Makes it all the more believable and compelling when you get really in depth about what works and doesn't, and your recommendations sound like they come for really good, specific reasons. Before clicking on your channel I'm so hoping you have videos about books I've already read lol
I love this series. It's interesting, when I was reading Children of Memory I was mostly thinking... this is good but not as good as the other two books. Then I finished it. And I can't stop thinking about it. And now it may be my favorite. I've also read Doors of Eden and, while I liked it very much, it's not near as good as this Children of... series.
I could listen to your voice all day - thank you for the content. Love children of time. I wish he did similar layout for the others but I also understand why he didn’t.
AT is an automatic buy for me. I love most of his books. I would say that for me Children of Memory was definitely my least favorite. I would highly recommend his fantasy series about even more bugs starting with An Empire in Black and Gold.
I've liked most of what I've read from him! I didn't like his latest fantasy so I'm not totally convinced I'll like the other one but I'm willing to try!
I'm trying to get into scifi and im looking into different books. Funnily enough I have A Memory Called Empire and Ancillary Justice on my tbr so i guess I'll go in reverse and try those and then move onto Tchaikovsky if I end up enjoying them!
6:52 as someone with mild to moderate arachnophobia (I'm ok with the passing depiction of a spider in passing/as protagonist eg in Spiderman comics or Anansi Boys) who stumbled across this on Audible without any prior knowledge of spider link, I have to say it was an unexpected revelation. The way the characters are introduced and developed is so good it had me rooting for them fully by the end of 1st book.
I'm a huge Tchaikovsky fan. Children of Time opened my eyes to other great sci-fi books (such as Arkady Martine's duology you mentioned in the video!). I've toyed with getting a tattoo of each of the three main animal species of the three books kinda staked together. While Children of Memory felt quite different, I really enjoyed it despite going off script a bit.
I'm afraid of spiders, but this story helped me confront and overcome that fear to some extent. The spiders are much more sympathetic than I was expecting.
I just read all three back to back to back and I absolutely loved books one and two and couldn’t put them down. I just finished book 3…… and…. I feel I am owed another book lol. I need it now. I have just been robbed of my intelligence as a reader and wish to have this beautiful and at times effed up story of exploration through the cosmos restored. Book 3 was a strange side quest at best. I miss the galactic battle days. I wish book three was 100 pages shorter and was published as a pause/break (a look over here for a bit) before we dive back into worlds we can touch.
I liked this story quite a bit. It almost lost me when they started veering heavily into religion, ( just because of my personal bad experiences in a cult ) but the story saved itself quite well. Looking forward to the next parts and conclusion.
I am content having only read book 1 haha I will say I am not a spider fan but I also do not visualize a lot when reading and that probably helped a bunch 😅
Currently reading the first book now. For 3 reasons: (1) Friends told me I probably be interested. (2) HBO said they are currently in pre production in making the first book into a series. (3) In this ever crazy world of politics and censorship, 2 months ago this series got banned in 15 states. Ironically the ban made more people interested in the series, VPN and online book sales shot up like crazy. Luckily I live in a state that does not censored books.
Children of Time was so great. I didn't like the other two books as much as the first, but they all made me feel much more intelligent after reading them. It made him an auto-buy author for me.
First of all, youtube recommended this to me which is really weird considering I've not looked up anything about this book lol. Having said that, I've read a chunk of book 1. It was slightly better than okay. The stuff with the spider was the most interesting to me
TLDR: Stretched out plot, no strong protagonists and questionable science make this one a disappointment. (Some mild spoilers ahead) You could write a blurb about this book that would also match Vernor Vinge's excellent _A Deepness in the Sky:_ Multiple factions of humans meet over a planet on which spidery pre-spaceflight sentients move towards their future. Sadly, that's about all _Children of Time_ has in common with _Deepness._ Let's shower some praise on _Deepness_ to see where _CoT_ is lacking: First, Trixia Bonsol: One character from _Deepness_ is the key to the best description of aliens I've seen in SF. Vinge uses a clever trick to make the aliens easily relatable without artificially antropomorphizing them, to the point where members of one family of aliens are my favorite characters in the book. In CoT, descriptions of the spiders are sufficiently arachnoid, but their life, and more importantly their characters remain distant. At one point, science is heavily bent to serve the plot: The virus that is used to uplift the spiders was easily able to create the empathy necessary to create a society, but only between females. Males are not even second-class cititzens, but often tasty snacks. Why is the powerful virus helpless all of a sudden, except to create artificial drama? (Note 1: Canibalism is not just "icky", it has some real negative impact on survival. Note 2, from Wikipedia: "P. labiata females are extremely aggressive to other females, trying to invade and take over each other's webs, which often results in cannibalism.") Overall though, the description of the spider's society is among the best parts of the novel. Tchaikovsky manages to think of entirely new ways to solve problems, it's not just a human society with eight legs. Second, Thomas Nau: _Deepness_ has one of the best antogonists in all of SF. Very clever and very evil not just in his actions, but also the description of his character. _CoT_ not only lacks a strong antagonist, but also a protagonist. The human point-of-view character is nothing more than a that, a pure spectator without any influence on the action. (I don't think he ever has to make a decision.) The only person who would make an interesting protagonist only appears as a side character. The spiders don't even have a possible protagonists, since their story is told in episodes that are generations removed from each other. In addition to their lack of relatability, characters also act very stupid when it serves the plot, especially (and unfortunately) during the climatic encounter at the end. Two possible antagonists in _CoT_ appear: One is removed off-screen, the other just fizzles out. I'm aware that pro/antogonists are fictional constructs, and not necessarily realistic, but they work. Third, Focus: _Deepness_ almost completely uses technologies from classical SF: Bussard drives, laser guns and so on. One of the few exceptions is Focus, an extremely powerful tool mastered by the antagonists, and not only a Big Gun, but through its nature an important element of the plot. _CoT_ has serious problems with technology. I already mentioned the uplift virus, which has capabilities which blatantly serve the plot. Even worse, and one core plot point: Why is the virus sophisticated enough to be able to breed intelligence and empathy into spiders, but is not even able to differentiate between arthopods and vertebrates? The designers wanted to uplift one particular species, not a lot of random ones. The ant's capabilities are simply magic, they are not only able to isolate genes (without any knowledge of DNA), but they also serve as electronics. Their description in the first half of the book is much better, and their dependency on pheromons is well described. After a certain point however, they are just a swarm of deus ex machina. Kern is another example of bad use of technology. It's a hybrid of a human and a computer, but how it was created and what its nature is in the end is badly described. There are also some errors in basics physics. To name two examples: 1) You cannot detect whether an alien radio source directly in front of you is transmitting specifically in your direction. 2) An orbiting thing does not de-orbit after it's destroyed by lasers. These are not major problems by themselves, but indicators for a weak foundation in science, and contributing to the lack of suspension of disbelief. Finally, two nitpicks about vocabulary: 1) It's not "evolution" except in the broadest sense of the word. Biological evolution is inherently unguided, which is not at all the case in the book. 2) "Nanovirus" is not a thing, every virus is "nano". For example, SARS-CoV-2 is between 50 and 140 nanometer long. The prose is mediocre (ie. standard for SF :-), with some awkwardness when intimacy or cursing are mentioned. Not spectactular, but good enough to be no distraction. Overall, the book is disappointing, though I admit it might be less so when you have no knowledge of biology. The most important fault however is the complete lack of anyone to love or hate. Things happen to people, but there is no reason to care. Avoid.
I wrote this before reading any other review and without knowing anything about the author. 1. Most people seem to like the book. What am I missing? 2. A zoologist, srsly? Could someone please point out why my take on the faulty science is wrong?
One thing that annoys me about this series and everyone talking about this series whom don't touch on this at all. Why Monkeys? Monkeys are like, way back in our evolutionary descendant path. There is a massive fork in the road that separates monkey from ape. We are apes. Apes are more advanced intellectually. Why wouldn't advanced humans use apes for evolutionary experiments? No advanced human society from a golden age would try and evolve a spider monkey (monkeys) and expect results that outstrip a scientifically generated advancement of chimpanzees (apes MUCH more similar to us) It bothers me that the author was so adept at creating an advanced arachnid culture, but failed to envelope that the human culture would actually use other primates instead of monkeys, if it was reality.
I loved children of time so much. I felt more attached to Holsten and lain as characters but I preferred the spider chapters much more as a whole. I found myself siding with the spiders over the humans despite my like for Holsten and Lain although I was extremely happy with the ending.
I just can't stop thinking about the ending of children of memory. I hope there will be another one.
Love this series so much. I think book one is some of the best scifi of the last 20yrs.
Check out Cage of Souls too. It's really cool and the setting is so vivid. If you ask me, the jungle is the creepiest location possible, and this jungle has personality.
I'll check it out!
Haven't read this or seen any of your videos before but god damn this was really well done. More than maybe any other book youtuber I've come across, you sound like you REALLY know what you're talking about. Not that the average booktuber is dishonest or anything but man it really feels like you truly have thought about and honestly believe everything you're saying. Makes it all the more believable and compelling when you get really in depth about what works and doesn't, and your recommendations sound like they come for really good, specific reasons.
Before clicking on your channel I'm so hoping you have videos about books I've already read lol
I love this series. It's interesting, when I was reading Children of Memory I was mostly thinking... this is good but not as good as the other two books. Then I finished it. And I can't stop thinking about it. And now it may be my favorite. I've also read Doors of Eden and, while I liked it very much, it's not near as good as this Children of... series.
Seems we are in the minority. I gave the first 2 books in the series 4.5, but the last one is a 5 all the way. The last 100 pages are mindblowing.
I could listen to your voice all day - thank you for the content. Love children of time. I wish he did similar layout for the others but I also understand why he didn’t.
AT is an automatic buy for me. I love most of his books. I would say that for me Children of Memory was definitely my least favorite. I would highly recommend his fantasy series about even more bugs starting with An Empire in Black and Gold.
I've liked most of what I've read from him! I didn't like his latest fantasy so I'm not totally convinced I'll like the other one but I'm willing to try!
I'm trying to get into scifi and im looking into different books. Funnily enough I have A Memory Called Empire and Ancillary Justice on my tbr so i guess I'll go in reverse and try those and then move onto Tchaikovsky if I end up enjoying them!
6:52 as someone with mild to moderate arachnophobia (I'm ok with the passing depiction of a spider in passing/as protagonist eg in Spiderman comics or Anansi Boys) who stumbled across this on Audible without any prior knowledge of spider link, I have to say it was an unexpected revelation. The way the characters are introduced and developed is so good it had me rooting for them fully by the end of 1st book.
I'm a huge Tchaikovsky fan. Children of Time opened my eyes to other great sci-fi books (such as Arkady Martine's duology you mentioned in the video!). I've toyed with getting a tattoo of each of the three main animal species of the three books kinda staked together. While Children of Memory felt quite different, I really enjoyed it despite going off script a bit.
oooh that sounds like a cool tattoo
Best boom series I've ever read. Children of Memory is especially awe inducing, with so many turns I got whiplash with every revelation.
I'm afraid of spiders, but this story helped me confront and overcome that fear to some extent. The spiders are much more sympathetic than I was expecting.
Loved Children of Time. And still hate spiders. Doesn’t help that I moved to Oklahoma
I just read all three back to back to back and I absolutely loved books one and two and couldn’t put them down. I just finished book 3…… and…. I feel I am owed another book lol. I need it now. I have just been robbed of my intelligence as a reader and wish to have this beautiful and at times effed up story of exploration through the cosmos restored. Book 3 was a strange side quest at best. I miss the galactic battle days. I wish book three was 100 pages shorter and was published as a pause/break (a look over here for a bit) before we dive back into worlds we can touch.
I liked this story quite a bit. It almost lost me when they started veering heavily into religion, ( just because of my personal bad experiences in a cult ) but the story saved itself quite well.
Looking forward to the next parts and conclusion.
I am content having only read book 1 haha I will say I am not a spider fan but I also do not visualize a lot when reading and that probably helped a bunch 😅
Yeah I think you'd like elements of book two but you've got so many other cool books to read no need to prioritise this!
I think you've convinced me to read this
Currently reading the first book now. For 3 reasons:
(1) Friends told me I probably be interested.
(2) HBO said they are currently in pre production in making the first book into a series.
(3) In this ever crazy world of politics and censorship, 2 months ago this series got banned in 15 states. Ironically the ban made more people interested in the series, VPN and online book sales shot up like crazy. Luckily I live in a state that does not censored books.
i was taken aback not seeing your judith cheek taps, i had to rewind and see if i missed it lol
Just finished the trilogy. I need an entire book on the prologue now 😩
Love those hair color
Children of Time was so great. I didn't like the other two books as much as the first, but they all made me feel much more intelligent after reading them. It made him an auto-buy author for me.
First of all, youtube recommended this to me which is really weird considering I've not looked up anything about this book lol. Having said that, I've read a chunk of book 1. It was slightly better than okay. The stuff with the spider was the most interesting to me
The spider part is for sure the best bit
Didnt know it was a series😅 i have children of time and i dont think i can get the other books so audiobooks it is😅😅😅
TLDR: Stretched out plot, no strong protagonists and questionable science make this one a disappointment.
(Some mild spoilers ahead)
You could write a blurb about this book that would also match Vernor Vinge's excellent _A Deepness in the Sky:_ Multiple factions of humans meet over a planet on which spidery pre-spaceflight sentients move towards their future.
Sadly, that's about all _Children of Time_ has in common with _Deepness._ Let's shower some praise on _Deepness_ to see where _CoT_ is lacking:
First, Trixia Bonsol: One character from _Deepness_ is the key to the best description of aliens I've seen in SF. Vinge uses a clever trick to make the aliens easily relatable without artificially antropomorphizing them, to the point where members of one family of aliens are my favorite characters in the book.
In CoT, descriptions of the spiders are sufficiently arachnoid, but their life, and more importantly their characters remain distant. At one point, science is heavily bent to serve the plot: The virus that is used to uplift the spiders was easily able to create the empathy necessary to create a society, but only between females. Males are not even second-class cititzens, but often tasty snacks. Why is the powerful virus helpless all of a sudden, except to create artificial drama? (Note 1: Canibalism is not just "icky", it has some real negative impact on survival. Note 2, from Wikipedia: "P. labiata females are extremely aggressive to other females, trying to invade and take over each other's webs, which often results in cannibalism.")
Overall though, the description of the spider's society is among the best parts of the novel. Tchaikovsky manages to think of entirely new ways to solve problems, it's not just a human society with eight legs.
Second, Thomas Nau: _Deepness_ has one of the best antogonists in all of SF. Very clever and very evil not just in his actions, but also the description of his character.
_CoT_ not only lacks a strong antagonist, but also a protagonist. The human point-of-view character is nothing more than a that, a pure spectator without any influence on the action. (I don't think he ever has to make a decision.) The only person who would make an interesting protagonist only appears as a side character.
The spiders don't even have a possible protagonists, since their story is told in episodes that are generations removed from each other.
In addition to their lack of relatability, characters also act very stupid when it serves the plot, especially (and unfortunately) during the climatic encounter at the end.
Two possible antagonists in _CoT_ appear: One is removed off-screen, the other just fizzles out.
I'm aware that pro/antogonists are fictional constructs, and not necessarily realistic, but they work.
Third, Focus: _Deepness_ almost completely uses technologies from classical SF: Bussard drives, laser guns and so on. One of the few exceptions is Focus, an extremely powerful tool mastered by the antagonists, and not only a Big Gun, but through its nature an important element of the plot.
_CoT_ has serious problems with technology. I already mentioned the uplift virus, which has capabilities which blatantly serve the plot. Even worse, and one core plot point: Why is the virus sophisticated enough to be able to breed intelligence and empathy into spiders, but is not even able to differentiate between arthopods and vertebrates? The designers wanted to uplift one particular species, not a lot of random ones.
The ant's capabilities are simply magic, they are not only able to isolate genes (without any knowledge of DNA), but they also serve as electronics. Their description in the first half of the book is much better, and their dependency on pheromons is well described. After a certain point however, they are just a swarm of deus ex machina.
Kern is another example of bad use of technology. It's a hybrid of a human and a computer, but how it was created and what its nature is in the end is badly described.
There are also some errors in basics physics. To name two examples: 1) You cannot detect whether an alien radio source directly in front of you is transmitting specifically in your direction. 2) An orbiting thing does not de-orbit after it's destroyed by lasers. These are not major problems by themselves, but indicators for a weak foundation in science, and contributing to the lack of suspension of disbelief.
Finally, two nitpicks about vocabulary: 1) It's not "evolution" except in the broadest sense of the word. Biological evolution is inherently unguided, which is not at all the case in the book. 2) "Nanovirus" is not a thing, every virus is "nano". For example, SARS-CoV-2 is between 50 and 140 nanometer long.
The prose is mediocre (ie. standard for SF :-), with some awkwardness when intimacy or cursing are mentioned. Not spectactular, but good enough to be no distraction.
Overall, the book is disappointing, though I admit it might be less so when you have no knowledge of biology. The most important fault however is the complete lack of anyone to love or hate. Things happen to people, but there is no reason to care.
Avoid.
I wrote this before reading any other review and without knowing anything about the author.
1. Most people seem to like the book. What am I missing?
2. A zoologist, srsly? Could someone please point out why my take on the faulty science is wrong?
One thing that annoys me about this series and everyone talking about this series whom don't touch on this at all.
Why Monkeys?
Monkeys are like, way back in our evolutionary descendant path.
There is a massive fork in the road that separates monkey from ape.
We are apes. Apes are more advanced intellectually.
Why wouldn't advanced humans use apes for evolutionary experiments?
No advanced human society from a golden age would try and evolve a spider monkey (monkeys) and expect results that outstrip a scientifically generated advancement of chimpanzees (apes MUCH more similar to us)
It bothers me that the author was so adept at creating an advanced arachnid culture, but failed to envelope that the human culture would actually use other primates instead of monkeys, if it was reality.
I’ve read book one