★★★★☆ Spiders > Humans

Children of Time

Adrian Tschaikovsky

** spoiler alert **

Children of Time unfolds in two threads. As the publisher's blurb suggests, "Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive." The two threads concern the two civilizations in question, which are, not to put too fine a point on it, humans and spiders. The humans are very human: petty, fractious, selfish, and stupid. To call them a "civilization" is flattery. As for the spiders, although they are not explicitly described as spiders in the blurb, they are described thus

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.

These words are clearly the writing of a human chauvinist. The spiders are "disastrous" only from the point of view of the humans. And to be entirely fair, the humans are disastrous for the spiders, or want to be.

In its description of spider civilization, Children of Time reminded me of the historical novels of James A. Michener (e.g. Centennial and The Source). Michener used to write long histories of particular places, beginning thousands (or even millions, in the case of Centennial) of years before the present day and tracing the history by telling the stories of people who lived there at successive times. Sarum: The Novel of England by Edward Rutherfurd is a very similar work telling the history of England through the city of Salisbury.

This is exactly the kind of story Adrian Tchaikovsky tells in Children of Time, but better. The spiders of Kern's World develop into a globe-spanning civilization, and the story is truly fascinating, and well-told. If you can learn to love a spider, you will love and admire the Portias, Biancas, and Fabians of spider history.

Eventually, of course, the two threads come together. Fortunately, that doesn't happen until near the end of the book. I didn't find the final resolution and the epilog as satisfying as the story that led up to them.

Children of Time is the first book in the Children of Time series. I am certainly interested in reading the rest.

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