paperback, 608 orrialde
2015ko eka. 4a(e)an Tor(e)n argitaratua.
Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet.
Who will inherit this new Earth?
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life.
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.
This book lags a little in the middle - could do with some better pacing. No doubt contributed to by the difficulty in empathizing with main characters that are both sentient and arachnid. The end was certainly a rush.
This book is more Star Trek than Star Trek. It embodies the ideals of infinite diversity in infinite combinations in a way that struck me to my heart. It stretches our minds to consider the most alien and for many people the most feared animals as having the capacity to be people, with just a little help. In all of his work, Adrian Tchaikovsky is a bull in the china shop of our delicate distinctions and artificial barriers between "thing" and "not thing".
Edukiari buruzko abisua Discussion of the ending
For most of this book I didn't expect to continue with the rest of the series. I very much enjoyed the spider scenes and seeing their culture, values, and technology evolve over time, but I didn't much care for any of the human scenes until right at the end.
One aspect that I particularly liked is that, ironically, the spiders are effectively Humanist at the end while the humans take on the place of the un-evolved animals who think of the spiders in a predator/prey relationship. The spiders then turn the tables and uplift the humans in the same way (and using the same mechanism) that the humans originally uplifted their civilization (except by bootstrapping empathy instead of sentience). It brought the whole thing to a nice conclusion in a circular way and made me decide to try the second book as well.
What a great book. I'm so happy I went back to it, and I'm looking forward to starting the second book in the trilogy, probably in the new year.
I would highly recommend this to any and all sci fi fans.
Una storia di scienza e tecnologia da una prospettiva completamente inaspettata. Un ragionamento molto interessante sul linguaggio e sulla terraformazione.
