Book Review: Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This is the sequel to Children of Time and I just had to read it after enjoying that one so much. Here's the Goodreads blurb:

Thousands of years ago, Earth's terraforming program took to the stars. On the world they called Nod, scientists discovered alien life -- but it was their mission to overwrite it with the memory of Earth. Then humanity's great empire fell, and the program's decisions were lost to time. Aeons later, humanity and its new spider allies detected fragmentary radio signals between the stars. They dispatched an exploration vessel, hoping to find cousins from old Earth. But those ancient terraformers woke something on Nod better left undisturbed.

Read on for my mostly spoiler-free review.

Overall Impression

This was a fascinating book, probably even better than it's predecessor. There is a lot going on plot-wise, and we do need a few sections of exposition, but otherwise it paints an intriguing tale of contact between civilizations. These new aliens are even more alien than the uplifted spiders and it's very interesting to see the characters struggle through to communicate with them.

Plot

The pacing of this story is quite interesting. I originally thought it was going to be a sequel, and it is, but the first section is setting up what has happened in this new solar system to set the stage. Each part has us jumping back and forward in time as we progress the story, discover a mystery, and then jump back in time to get the context. It's very rewarding, though towards the end there is a long section that drags a bit with a lot of exposition. Overall, it was another take of the narrative style in the prior book, which had us tracking two civilizations across time until they intersected.

Characters

Like the prior book, there are some sections in the past with characters representing samples of their generation. The octopuses Paul, Salome, and others are examples of these. The past also features a few humans like Senkovi and Baltiel, that become legends in the uplifted species mythos, and through their action led to the situation they find themselves in. In the present, we have a contingent of Humans and Portiids like Helena, Meshner, Portia, Fabian, and others, as well as the re-purposed Kern AI. We jump through perspectives a lot, so sometimes we see the situation through very alien perspectives.

Setting / World Building

The setting is again incredible. The story starts with a similar premise as the last- a terraforming operation. However, unlike the last one this one is in the earlier stages and arrives a system with two viable planets. Without spoiling much, one of these already has some form of alien life, the other is mostly ocean work starts towards making uplifted octopuses. The two planets go in different directions because of human interference and eventually the system is visited by the Portiids and Humans that set out at the end of the last book. 

One of the interesting themes of this book is language. While it was also somewhat in the prior book, Kern's influence over the Portiids established a baseline so that they can live together with the Humans. In this book, there isn't enough time for that to happen and the species they encounter are even more alien than they anticipated. There is a bit of description of how an octopuses neural networks works and its disconnected nature leads to frustrations and obstacles to overcome. A lot of science fiction stories rely heavily on human-like aliens, but this story presents such a fascinating, yet plausible alternative that you realize how difficult inter-species communication can be.

Final Thoughts

This was a great book, a worthy sequel to Children of Time. It touches on some interesting concepts behind language, evolution, and the sense of self, while still being a tense story about alien contact. The characters and plot are interesting, but I focused far more on the setting. The ending opens up the universe a bit and ends with a little bit of a teaser which I can only assume is the subject of the next book.