Review: Children of Ruin (Children of Time #2) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Goodreads

“Because in a very real way the ecosystem was the basic unit of life: species creating, by their very presence, an environment for other species to work in.”

Release Date:May 14th, 2019

Genre(s): Science-fiction, Space opera

Publisher: Orbit

Pages: 571

Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️

Synopsis

Children of Ruin is the second book in the Children of Time duology. While terraforming the planet Nod thousands of years before the present, alien life is discovered. Scientists attempt to remove it by overwriting it with Earth’s data. But with the fall of humanity, with the planet only to be discovered thousands of years later, much of the lost information – and lifeforms – were disturbed, and awakened.

Review

I can’t say that I liked Children of Ruin as much as I liked Children of Time. However, there quite a few aspects of this novel that I enjoyed.

Although this novel takes place in a different time, reading Children of Time first is definitely necessary. This book references the history of the events of the first one and requires that background knowledge to fully grasp the story here.

Children of Ruin explores First Contact in a different way from the first novel that I really liked. In this book I definitely felt more of a difference of opinion among the characters in both timelines, rather than the first book where the opinions were more of a collective than varied. You also have several alien species in this novel, which I felt added so much to the depth of this universe.

Despite more fleshing out of characters in this novel, I would definitely still say that the Children of Time duology is not one where you should expect a character-driven story if that’s your preference. These books are very heavily based on the overall conflict and the exploration of First Contact situations. I noticed some instances here and there about discussions of personal matters, but these aren’t major points of the novel. I noticed some questionable thoughts from the characters that I would not expect from this kind of timeline as well – one of the characters wonders if an asexual character spends his time “pining for the unrequited love of one of his mollusks, or something.” (Guess we’re not as accepting in the future either.) So keep in mind that this isn’t a more fleshed out portion of the story if character development is more important to you when choosing books.

The story follows a pretty similar format to Children of Time, but you also have a dual-timeline perspective added in. I advised newer readers of sci-fi that Children of Time was a good pick, but Children of Ruin can definitely be more confusing, especially considering that this book does have more technical explanations than the first book.

Overall, while I loved the expansion of the universe in Children of Ruin, I don’t think this book creates the same level of interest. While the main plotline is different, it does follow a fairly similar arc to Children of Time, so it didn’t always feel as new and captivating. Regardless, I’m glad I finally read this duology. It was definitely the big space exploration story that I needed.