eBook, 406 pages

English language

Published Jan. 31, 2023 by Orbit.

ISBN:
978-0-316-46651-6
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4 stars (10 reviews)

Earth failed. In a desperate bid to escape, the spaceship Enkidu and its captain, Heorest Holt, carried its precious human cargo to a potential new paradise. Generations later, this fragile colony has managed to survive, eking out a hardy existence. Yet life is tough, and much technological knowledge has been lost.

Then strangers appear. They possess unparalleled knowledge and thrilling technology – and they've arrived from another world to help humanity’s colonies. But not all is as it seems, and the price of the strangers' help may be the colony itself.

5 editions

Worth persevering

4 stars

This is the third -- and I believe final -- installment in Adrian Tchaikovsky's acclaimed Children of Time series.

The action once again moves on to another alien world but with many of the same characters and species from the earlier two books. And of course we are introduced to additional new intelligences, as you'd expect from the earlier stories' trajectories.

However it took me well over half the book to really get into it. The multiple plots seemed not only hard to keep track of, but self-contradictory at times as well. Eventually everything does fall into place and there are enough plot twists to keep you intrigued right to the end, but there were definitely times when I had to force myself to keep reading as the frustration was starting to get too much.

I'm glad I kept going, though. In the last third of the book many of …

Children of Memory

4 stars

Children of Memory is the third (and final?) book in the Children of Time saga. I have very mixed feelings about this book (and also this series). If I had to sum up my feelings, the last 50 pages of this book are absolutely excellent but the middle ~200 pages drag on for quite some time. If I had to review the series as a whole, I am glad I read these three books personally, but my recommendation for others who hadn't read any would be to read the first book and stop there.

One thing I think this series does well is that each book has a very different vibe overall. Book one is very space opera / evolutionary theater, book two adds in a significant horror element, and book three feels more like a mystery (fairytale)? of strange contradictory events. I strongly agree with Tak, who described this …

My Review of Children of Memory

5 stars

Children of Memory takes the series to new heights, with a mix of returning characters and newcomers for this installment. The first 100 or so pages had me wondering if Tchaikovsky had strayed too far from the first two books, but things quickly clicked into place. While still science fiction at its core, fantasy and fairytale elements are woven in, making for a thrilling combination that was eventually hard to put down.

There isn’t much I can say about this one without getting into spoilers. All three of these books are great, but this was a masterpiece.

Review of 'Children of Memory' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I am afraid I am going to have to be a little hard here and say this barely scraped 4 stars for me. The middle really dragged. I can't really explain why without going into spoilers (which I am not a fan of doing in reviews). I will say that there wasn't the same sense of progress that you got from the first two books. A sense of something new developing. The middle third is very focused on a (to all appearances) regressive setting, thus the sense of the new wasn't there for me for a good chunk of this read.
The ideas are still top tier. The book started well and the ending was satisfying. Maybe it needed a tighter edit, maybe I was just not in the right place for this.
Still, it is Tchaikovsky and my reservations could just be a me thing. It's still at least …

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rated it

5 stars
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rated it

4 stars
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rated it

3 stars