The Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
This book is fabulous. I am still thinking about it and I am gutted that I am not quite ready for the sequel yet as I miss everyone and everything about it.
There are two connected narratives in the book. One, an internal dialogue with sentient spiders, the other is more dialogue-driven and is an exciting tale of one of the last colony ships of humans who are desperately trying to find a new home. I loved the spiders’ tale much more but it would have been a bit much if the whole book was about that alone. I would say the same for the human adventure too. The switch between each story from chapter to chapter helped to keep the pace and make this the perfect page-turning book.
The gender politics in the spider world are fascinating. We all know of spiders that eat their male partners after mating and it was really wonderful to see that society develop, from hunter-gatherers to living in cities and a kingdom, and their treatment of men changing within that world. The spiders also have Understanding and genetically remember what their ancestors knew. I found this particularly fascinating as we know things like trauma, for example, are genetically inherited. Only this week on Katherine Ryan’s podcast, I learned if you show a baby a photo of a spider, the kid will recoil and start to cry. How apt that her example was about my new best friends, spiders!
With the human colony ship, Tchaikovsky also reminds us how evolution and learning is not linear and that our ancestors were often more developed than we were. Someone mentioned how it reminded them of Mary Beard’s book about the Romans and how future generations were so primitive compared to the past. The way Tchaikovsky explores the concept of time was very different for me. I have seen similar concepts in film, but nothing quite like this book.
The only, absolutely only, thing that was naff about the book was the name of the main male character. All other humans of the future had futuristic names except our hero, who is called Holsten Mason. Given that he is also a bit Harrison Ford Indiana Jones, his name was a little jarring each time I read it. A bit Dan Brown. But let’s not be too snobby.
My eye roll count when men write female characters is usually so high that I can’t cope - no such complaints here. All the women are written well, including Portia and Bianca (both spiders). Worthy of comparison to Ursula le Guin type world-building, I was completely engaged and believed it all.
Finally, the ending. No spoilers but it took me completely by surprise and it was perfect. I haven’t said that about a book or a film for a very long time!
Enjoy!