Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky is the first book of two in his Children of Time series. To get right to the chase, Children of Time is a very good read for science fiction fans even though it had a very big flaw. One of the main focal point talks about the often thought of human issue regarding terraforming other planets to expand humanization across the galaxy. The many problems and issues that plague the Earth only made humans realize that sooner or later the planet would be inhospitable. Better get a move on it if we don’t want humans to be on the extinction list! Of course things don’t always go as planned and when disaster strikes unexpectedly, the fate of the entire human species lies within just one ship.

Children of Time deals not only with how humans but alien lifeforms as well. The story stretches a span of over hundreds and thousands of years. When an alien life form gets accidentally created, we tackle the many issues and problems that they face as well. What makes them unique? How do they view themselves in the grand scheme of the universe? What other higher beings are out there and what is their relation, if any, do they have? I’ll try not to spoil things too much but the alien life form we’re talking about is none other than spiders. What is unique is that we get to see how this species evolve over the centuries with each generation being more smart than the previous by being able to pass on their knowledge. I’m not going to lie. It made me chuckle every time I pictured spiders in jetpacks, life suits and breathing kits strapped to their bodies.

The biggest gripe I had with Children of Time is the forgettable characters. I was just not attached to any one of them in any way, shape or form. I liked the story itself but the human characters themselves were fairly generic and bland. This is semi-forgivable only because I was more interested in the choices that they had to make and they definitely had a lot of difficult one’s to make if they wanted to preserve humankind. The book bounces between the human’s and spider’s point of view with each chapter fairly consistently.

The best part I liked about Children of Time is the ending. The beauty of it I realized immediately after is that this is one of those endings where you can take it at face value and call it a day or forces you to really think about it. If you haven’t caught on by now, then yes, Children of Time is a book that requires you to think outwardly and really force yourself to look at things from a different perspective, literally. At the end, who really comes out on top? Was it even a challenge in the first place or did whatever happen just a part of nature itself that even over a course of thousands of years will never ever change? I probably won’t read book two of this series but fans wanting some good science fiction should definitely read Children of Time at the very least.