I went into this book totally blind. In fact, it was the cover that initially grabbed me when I was spending way too long in the local bookshop: Children of Time caught my attention right away as I was browsing the shelves. Now, you always hear that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I do. I can’t help it: I’m a sucker for detailed cover art! And Children of Time features what looks like a screenshot from an Indie sci-fi feature film epic! It was gorgeous and, safe to say, I was caught like a fish on a hook.

To cut a long story short though: I did not know that this was a book about evolutionary spiders at all. A thoroughly unique idea, and one that I greatly enjoyed as it captured my imagination and attention so wholly, that I was quick to become obsessed, and unbelievably impressed, by the imagination that some humans I share this planet with possess.

I have nothing but praise to say for the characterisation in Children of Time, especially where the spiders are concerned. Because although we cannot know what animals really think (at least not currently) the way Tchaikovsky developed the spider’s thinking from primitive to sophisticated was entirely believable. Adrian Tchaikovsky studied Zoology at university, and this background knowledge really shone through in Children of Time. There was such a plausible evolution depicted throughout the novel and I was left fully in awe with each turn of the page.

This was a character driven story, truly, and I found myself growing attached to pretty much everyone that I read about, in particularly one Holsten Mason. I have to say that I’m quite basic when it comes to characters, as I often find myself drawn towards the leads, admittedly in no small part because they’re often the ones that we spend the most time with and therefore get to know best. Holsten was no different, and he was there to provide us with a steady perspective of humanity’s journey. I found that I was just as caught off guard as he was each time he awoke from cryogenic sleep; and there was some kind of camaraderie that I felt with Holsten. A camaraderie at being so totally blindsided by some of the developments that happened while he was sleeping.

I found that I particularly loved the way that Tchaikovsky dealt with the numerous different perspectives he had to juggle with in this book, and I appreciated the unique voices he managed to afford everyone. Too often, I find at least, authors will try and do the multiple-perspective narrative in their books, only for the tone to be very similar across the board. As in, without being told that the following character has changed, we wouldn’t have known from reading alone.

But Tchaikovsky was so good at keeping the tones distinctive from one character to the next, and I really enjoyed (and thought that it was rather smart!) how he kept repeating the names ‘Portia’, ‘Bianca’ and ‘Fabian’ across the spider generations. It made understanding the evolution taking place all the more clearer and also created a solidarity and a closeness with the descendants of the original spiders; especially as there was a sadness in me at not being able to spend more time with the OG Portia, Bianca and Fabian.

The human narrative in this book is dialogue based, driven by conflict and appeasement. Whereas the spider narrative is driven by an internal dialogue that battles natural primitiveness with a newfound self-aware intellect. This alternating narrative really made for an interesting change of pace throughout the story, keeping me even more engaged and providing breathing room to a wildly intriguing and involved story.

The writing was solid and very descriptive, which is always an absolute positive in any book, as I love it when a story can make the scenes in my head become all the more vivid. The complexity of the language, also, was effective at contributing to the world building and at conveying such intelligent and researched themes of evolution and psychology, that the ingenuity of the concepts in the book were truly credible and convincing to me. Who knows, maybe there is an advanced spider society out in infinity somewhere!

I did find it interesting, and a tad bit tragic, to read what became of humanity in this alternative universe: a tale of planetary overconsumption and resource-squander that you often see happen in these futuristic science fiction tales. A common trope, one that I enjoy in fact (in some twisted, anticipation-of-society’s-downfall-kinda-way) but that some would say is overused. It still doesn’t make it any easier to read and understand this drastic lack of humanity in…. humanity.

There was also particularly such an interesting take of gender politics within the spider world, (understandable in hindsight, considering that female spiders often eat the males in the wild), and I thoroughly enjoyed being a viewer to the spiders great evolvement. From being naturalistic hunter-gatherers, they were quick to bloom into something else entirely: developing into a society that lived in great, sprawling cities, and advancing enough as a species to develop and appreciate technology. It was truly fascinating to behold.

Not to spoil anything, but the ending of this book really took me by surprise and, funnily enough, I don’t feel that I’m quite ready to read the second book in this series yet. I find myself missing the first exciting adventures that I shared with the characters in Children of Time. So while I know I’ll get to the the sequel eventually, first maybe I’ll make a start on some of Tchaikovsky’s other stories and just sit with the Children of Time characters for a little bit longer…