Book Review: Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Children of Strife is the 4th book in the Children of Time series. It continues the trend of terraforming planets, alien creatures, and forays into the nature of consciousness. Here is the Goodreads blurb:

From the award-winning master of sci-fi Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Strife is the unmissable follow-up space opera to the highly acclaimed Children of Time, Children of Ruin and Children of Memory.

In this epic adventure, we visit a far-future after earth fell, where ark ships had hunted for a new home. They sought lost worlds terraformed in earth’s forgotten past. We follow a ship crewed by maverick humans, spiders and a spectacularly punchy mantis shrimp captain as they rediscover one such world, and an ark.

Then human crewmate Alis wakes to discover that she, her captain and the ship’s intelligence are the only ones left on their ship. But what happened to those who left to explore the ark… and the world below?

Children of Strife is the extraordinary next volume set in the Children of Time universe, featuring epic adventure, first contact and the nature of intelligence among the stars.

Read on for my spoiler-free review.

Overall Impression

This is one of those rare books that reminds me that sci-fi can be very much a criticism or commentary on today’s events. The characters in the First Age are so analogous to today’s rich and powerful that it’s almost uncanny. The plot weaves through three separate timelines leaving you in mystery until you fully catch up. And as other books in the series, the setting is unique and very interesting.

Plot

The plot of this book weaves between three different time periods, or ages. The First Age is the era of the terraformers, when people like Avrana Kern were building up worlds. We follow a different group of people as they try to terraform a world and survive the electronic blackout that takes out most of the advanced societies. The Second Age is the era of the colonizers, when the remnants of humans on Earth traveled to the stars seeking the terraformed worlds. And the Third Age is the current latest time where Spiders, Humans, Octopuses, Nodans, and more explore the galaxy together.

My only criticism is that towards the end, there are plenty of mentions and references to “the plan” to solve a particular situation. Characters talk about it, but we the reader never see that (e.g., a scene may end with “And so she tells them the plan.”). I was worried it would be like a few other books I’ve read where a big deal is made of it, but it never even appears in the book. Fortunately, the framing here is a bit different, though. But it’s very clear the plan is going to work so we don’t get to know about it until it happens so as not to lessen the experience. It’s a bit of a cheap shot, but at least it does tie in foreshadowing that has happened elsewhere in the book so it’s not as bad as I thought moving into it.

Characters

In the First Age, we have characters like Gerey Hartmand and Redina Kott, among others. These are contemporaries of Kern, extremely arrogant, rich, and powerful. It’s uncanny how similar today’s billionaires and politicians sound like these characters in the story.

In the Second Age, we have Cosimir, an engineer preparing to board one of the ark ships with the rest of her crew. We get to see a bit more of the poisoned Earth before the ark ships set off.

And in the Third Age, where we spend most of the time, we have Alis, Mira, Cato, Portia, and many more. Cato is a new species, though one we technically saw hints of in Children of Time. He is an evolved mantis shrimp, a Stomatopod, and is a fascinating war-like person with poetic speech. That said, the main character is Alis, a human who has been exploring the mysterious simulated world from Children of Memory.

Setting / World Building

We have a familiar setup as some of the other novels in this series. A group of humans is setting up a terraforming project, but this time there is a twist to it. Instead of being the highly qualified scientists and engineers, you have a group of oligarchs with inflated egos that think they can do better. Things go bad quickly and they bicker constantly among themselves. There is a breakthrough, but you can’t help but hate and pity this group of people.

The world that ends up being made is crazy. It has life in it, but it extends out into space forming a ring of plant-like matter around the planet. And the life in the world is… aggressive. Thus ensue all the troubles in the Second and Third Age when the planet is rediscovered thousands of years later. The setup, though, is very interesting and extrapolates from things we’ve seen in the prior books so it feels plausible and rooted in this world’s universe.

We also get to see a new species, the mantis shrimp-like Stomatopods of Kern’s World. There were hints of them before but we get a point of view character now. Due to their aggressive nature, many struggle to fit into Panspecific society, the group of people that now make up all the known species we’ve seen to date, but it’s interesting to learn how they see the world.

Final Thoughts

This was a pretty good book. I don’t think it was the strongest in the series, but it lives up to the title. There is a lot of tension and conflict in this one, personified by several of the characters and their interactions with each other. The plot was well paced and the setting makes me want to see other worlds in this universe. I still want to learn more about the simulation machine, for example. The characters are pretty good, I can totally imagine today’s wealthy and powerful behaving like those in the First Age of the story. Overall, if you’ve already been reading this series this is a worthy addition to it and I can recommend picking it up. If you haven’t yet started, Children of Time is where to begin.