Go spiders!

English edition.

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Ah! What an interesting book! Kind of tricky too; it has a greater-than-life plot literally spanning through generations and time, it is a book about evolution after all. The premise is as brilliant as original: how would it be if other completely different species than humans, had a bit of help and push a big evolutive jump and enhance the process to continue evolving? Let’s say… insects and oh, humans ending themselves as usual. Lo and behold something very strange. It has the feel of some old school science fiction.

The premise and worldbuilding are amazing. A faraway future with an expansive and arrogant humanity with plenty of technology to play and extremist behaviors to beware and the shocking end of it… almost. Amidst the little remains, the journey begins with hope and survival: a terraformed planet with life for an experiment that fails in the way it was intended, but succeeds to life starting anew with a push and the aimless surviving ship of humanity trying to avoid the end in the direst situations. The evolutionary tale is fascinating, it plays with a total reset of perspective, spiders see the world with more eyes than us in a different way. At the end is a bit difficult to reconcile this strange progression with our own and in that respect, the role of Dr. Kern is fundamental, she is our link between.

It has two parallel narrations. In one side is the new evolution, mainly of spiders. And for the other side is the decadence and extinguishing of humanity. There is a contrast in nature with both narrations, fits perfectly and serves the purpose of the story. Surprisingly, the spider side is very polished and rich with detail, with a sympathetic view: a history of possibilities and change. It runs through with a series of generational key characters given the evolutionary scope, and are surprisingly solid and clearly characterized.

The humans on the other side are the representation of decadence, ignorance and violence; it works well with the contrast. The set of human protagonists come through the large scope with technology (hibernation and such) and are well characterized but with not the same sympathy. The most interesting character for me was Dr. Kern, the psychotic megalomaniac who turns to be the unwilling savior of everything.
The established matriarchy in the spider society was a very nice and clever touch, until it gets taxing at first, I felt overexplained the reversal of gender roles. But later, after reading the book I thought that it isn’t really overexplained or taxing, being a woman in a macho society, I could see more clearly how much it is needed, so it makes complete sense now.

The book is not without flaws. In the characters resides one of the weaker parts of the book. The spiders are good, until the scope wears them thin, being one set of characters repeating themselves in each generation (even in the names to call them). It fits the story but narrows it down; and the humans don’t seem to get richer at any time, I couldn’t care at all for any of them, maybe it was intentional, but they felt kind of hollow too. It is the story itself who becomes the protagonist and takes charge of some of these weaknesses. It works almost completely. The other aspect is midway, it loses strength, maybe is the wearing out of the characters or too explored particularities. In the third arc the pace is up again, maybe a little too much, comparing to the previous arcs, but the story never disappoints and everything is neatly connected at the end.

A heavily recommended read.