Children of Memory

Children of Time Book 4

by

English language

Published Nov. 27, 2022 by Macmillan Publishers Limited.

ISBN:
9781529087185

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (7 reviews)

The unmissable follow-up to the highly acclaimed Children of Time and Children of Ruin.

Earth is failing. In a desperate bid to escape, the spaceship Enkidu and its captain, Heorest Holt, carry its precious human cargo to a potential new Eden. 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 Liff, Holt’s granddaughter, hears whispers that the strangers in town aren’t from neighbouring farmland. That they possess unparalleled technology – and that they've arrived from another world. But not all questions are so easily answered, and their price may be the colony itself.

5 editions

reviewed Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky

A fascinating universe

5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. Even though it was confusing until we learned what was going on.

Having read most of Adrian Tchaikovsky's books, I'm amazed at the breadth of styles he uses and worlds he has us inhabit.

He's also gifted at writing aliens that are truly alien and characters who don't all thing the way I imagine he thinks. Here the aliens descended from Earth animals, but they do think differently from humans and Tchaikovsky does an interesting exploration of what intelligence and sentience means.

People seem to suspect that this is the last volume in this series. It feels like this might be the case. I would be entirely happy if there is another. But then, I'd also like more volumes in other series he's written and even sequels to some of his "stand-alone" novels. So, I'm good with letting him decide where to take us next.

reviewed Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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 …

reviewed Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky

A worthy addition to this series

5 stars

I have been a huge fan of this series ever since I read Children of Time. This one is on a par with it. The premise is the same: an Earth Ark ship on its way to a new planet, supposed to have been terraformed in anticipation of human colonists, escaping a dying Earth. In line with the Gilgamesh of Children of Time, this one is called the Enkidu, on its way to a planet called Imir. but they are not the only one. There is also an expedition from the Humans and their non-human allies (portiids, octopi, and the new addition: corvids). There is, I think, a greater sense of tragedy to this one, with a mystery at its center. The ending is ambiguous so I'm not sure whether there will be another "Children of..." entry or not. Either way, this one was a page-turner.

reviewed Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Slow middle, interesting ideas

4 stars

Similar to a lot of the other reviews I'm reading this one just didn't grip me quite as much as the first two books. I liked the folk tale atmosphere and the fact that it uses the first two books being similar to trick you into thinking that this one would follow a similar path, but I didn't feel that the alien life forms were as well explored in this book. We got very little on the actual paired-mind of the corvids, with most of the focus being on the two individual parts of the mind, and the other mind that possibly exists in the book is only hinted at vaguely. I enjoyed the ending, but not as much as the first two since the big reveal at the end felt a bit obvious (albeit the details were all different from my own guesses).

Overall this felt like the middle …

Subjects

  • English literature