Children of Time

By: Adrian Tchaikovsky

Narrated by: Mel Hudson

Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel 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.

Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?

©2016 Adrian Tchaikovsky (P)2017 Audible Ltd

Critic reviews

" Children of Time is a joy from start to finish. Entertaining, smart, surprising and unexpectedly human." (Patrick Ness)

Great Narrator and a good if flawed story

What made the experience of listening to Children of Time the most enjoyable?

The narrator is excellent. I really enjoyed listening. The story is at times excellent but at other times it is very flawed where its motivations and portrayals of HUman nature are concerned.

Any additional comments?

The story is an excellent and compelling idea with one huge flaw that appears right at the beginning. The author seems to have a very black, almost cliche view of what motivates humanity, its response to the strange and unknown and does not even allow them the ability to understand blindingly obvious observations. The lead character of the book is timid, essentially contributes nothing aside from internal dialogue and in the end is unable to even suggest what he has already figured out as a result of a combination of cowardice and insecurity.

It was frustrating to have listened to 14 hours only to have the book end with the humans still unable to comprehend the most basic of things. They are supposed to have lifted themselves up from tragedy yet do not in any way reflect the necessary growth in perspective nor driving curiosity that had to be present for them to have restored so much of their lost civilization. The reasons and methods of humanity's initial collapse are very thin. To the point of contrivance.

I can see why so many consider this a great book. It smacks of the kind of great sci-fi you would find in the 60's and 70's. The problem is that where other great authors recognized the breath of Human emotion, experience and capacity with in their characters, or at least had a counter-balance, this book from beginning to end seems to exist on the premise that all humans do is attack what they do not know and will always destroy vs investigate or explore other possibilities.

It seems not to far a leep to think the author views HUmanity in a very narrow way and does not recognize our ability to deduct or take seriously any potential reaction than to attack all that is strange before ever trying to understand it. At the very least I find it unlikely in the extreme that people who lifted themselves out of near extinction as a result of a turning on each other, would so easily always turn to violence to solve problems. I really think that if the author had shown more balance in the scope of human emotion, motivations and capacity for curiosity this book would truly shine. Instead, almost as if the author simply thinks Mankind is nothing but a bunch of monkey destroyers, Humans have to be genetically modified to accept the strange and unusual.

If you do not mind having a lot of essentially, "Human bad all else good" you will like this book to the end. As for others, if they are honest with themselves, they will see how almost from the beginning every human is frankly a violent idiot. It is largely because of the last two hours that I found the story to be broken where motivation.

I don't know how to present this book to others. One is the dystopian view of humanity, One is the uplifting view but everything seems to come down to problems with the very poor dialogue and a poor understanding of the breath of HUman potential. It is almost written as if the author lives a very sheltered existence and thus does not any potential potential for Humans.

Be prepared to dislike the last two hours after spending 14+ hours listening to the book.

Extraordinary, mind-twisting ideas

Any additional comments?

Absolutely riveting, unexpected. Best book I've listened to since The Name of the Wind (different genre completely but I have very eclectic tastes) Ending did not quite resonate, Octavia Butler would have done better with the concept, but it is what it is. Still, what a concept!

Absolutely spellbinding!

Had zero expectations, heard it was a good read. Blew me away. Incredible writing, engaging story, world building is amazing. 6 out of 5

Best narrator on all of Audible

This is the kind of narrators that should be hired. It’s obvious that she researched and developed her characters beforehand -and this process had to have been extensive! No errors, no flubs.

Some of the most inventive science fiction I’ve read in a long time. Very dense, maybe to a fault.

Pretty amazing

I’m a very picky sci-fi reader. I can’t finish probably a third of what I’ve picked up and force myself to suffer through maybe half of what I finish. Most sci-fi is just too unbelievable (you need some basis in reality for technology you present or none at all) or the plot is dumb or I dislike the characters. Children of Time is unlike any sci-fi book I’ve ever read (or listened to). It spans vast distances and times much like Frank Herbert’s Dune books (excellent classics) and it is similarly very very well constructed and written. It is believable (relative to what else is out there). The plot and subplots, like the characters, are well developed. I might’ve taken them elsewhere had I been the author, but this just added to the unpredictability of the story and ending. All in all, you should give it a try. If it gets too heavy halfway through, put it down to finish something shorter then come back to it. The narrator did a very fine job as well.

Awesome !!!

So unpredictable.
When this book came out there was so much noise about how good it is that I got the audiobook the day it came out, but only now about 6-7 month later I got the chance to listen to it because I got hundreds of audiobooks waiting for reviews and the authors don't like to wait, and I also got close to 40 audiobooks which are mine and just like Children of Time I have no time to get to my own books..
Any way this was so unexpected, I was sure that this book will be totally different, surprisingly it was amazing, it's one of those books that you can't understand how the author was even able to imagine and write it all.
If I'm writing to much gibberish it's because I'm still awestruck so my apologies.
And I fully all Hartley recommend this book to all !!!

Great storytelling!

I enjoyed listening to this book. The narrator did a very good job. She enhanced the story in many ways.

I found the idea of other sentient living things very interesting. I find the writer had made great efforts to explore what an evolving species other than Homo sapiens could become, exploiting whatever base characteristics we humans know of them. I also found the treatment of “god” and “messenger” very intriguing. And there was the societal hierarchy and its ills among the growing sentient species that was so distinctly, for lack of a better term, human nature.

I did not expect the ending to be the way it was but I did suspect some kind of positive revelation of sorts. The premises of the book have some flaws, in that the human race has been relegated to a bunch of worse than barbaric and primitive lot. Having said that, we do see this tragic quality in us play out in the news and even on social media 24/7.

evolving understanding

I liked the evolution of missteps of humans and the persistence of humanity. this story presented common human concepts in abstract and thoughtful ways.

Exceptional Scientific Speculation

This book is an excellent piece of speculation, grounded in the biological science as well as spacecraft. Its views on evolution, communication, socialization, and technology built on foundatioms other than human are wonderful. Underpinning it is a narrative played out like Greek or Japanese drama, with plenty of archetypes stuck in their ways and playing their parts to move along the story and not so much nuanced changing perspective, agonized uncertainty, or angst. If you like science, amd a good story of space and otherness you will love this book.The performance is solid, and doesnt get in the way of the story.

Great Story

This is an amazing work of science fiction. The author took on many complex themes and tied them together flawlessly. I would absolutely recommend this to anyone who enjoys hard science fiction.