Publisher – Tor UK

Published – Out Now

Price – £9.99 paperback £5.99 Kindle eBook

It has been waiting through the ages. Now it's time . . .

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.

And it’s been waiting for them.

So how do you follow a much-loved SF novel like Children of Time? It would be very easy to simply repeat the format of Children of Time and show us another linear journey through evolution and progress. But braver and better series take risks and for me reading Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky for me has a much more interesting core theme – what is life and intelligence and how do we recognise it? This also has a different approach and tone creating a really engrossing reading experience.

As the Earth imploded through a mix of climate change, pollution and war a small group of Terraformers leave the Earth on a ship named the Aegean and travel to a remote star and system of planets to prepare it for colonists. But their leader Baltiel is shocked to find the planet they call Nod appears to have life in ways we have never seen before – the first ever alien life found everywhere. Deciding to catalogue this for the momentous discovery it is the team split into two and a different ice planet to be named Damascus is chosen for terraforming under the guidance of the introverted, but kind-hearted Senkovi who also has a cunning plan to use his favourite life form – the Octopus to learn and assist the process (using the uplift process devised by the famous Dr Avrana Kern). But all goes soon wrong – a computer virus from Earth’s final battles destroys a lot of their technology and Nod is found to have some life forms far more dangerous than anythign anyone has seen before

Many generations later a spaceship arrives crewed by the intelligent Portiid species (descended from spiders but much larger, thoughtful and technically advanced) and Humans who have put aside their differences and are working together to explore the universe. They arrive in a time of war, danger on all sides and frustratingly species who do not seem able to easily communicate. A small team are sent to investigate but it may not be enough, and danger could spread across the rest of the universe if no one is careful.

Initially Children of Ruin feels a more chaotic and dangerous story than Children of Time. Whereas there we had two plot lines of Humans and Portiids converging and along the way societies building or collapsing here Tchaikovsky gives us three plotlines. What happened on Nod and how it went so wrong; how Damascus moved from ice planet to a world where Octopods become the dominant lifeform and then our more familiar Portiid/Human crew finding it has all gone to hell. In many ways this is a story that really uses the Title – whereas the Portiids in the first book had the luxury of time to evolve and become the advanced life form we as human readers learnt to bond and emote with here the disruption of two storylines mean we arrive late to the party and have to try and make links with intelligences that are not recognisably human. In fact, for me the stand-out theme for this novel in the sequence is communication and our need to connect with others.

Tchaikovsky gives us two new intelligences one based on Octopods and one that is very much non-earth based. The Octopus storyline is fascinating as we have the challenge of creatures that live in the moment; wear their heart on their sleeve (or skin) and have three intelligences within themselves making decisions often at odds to one another. They’re almost to human and Portiids logical and then very quickly appear not - changing minds at a moment's notice. We see they’re very advanced and yet also very to our eyes chaotic. Their situation as we find is on the brink of destruction but how can you bond with people who do not think like you do? Here the non-neurotypical view of intelligence has to be explored and I love the fact that our crew has to learn to accept that this is who the species are. The idea we can only bond to intelligence like our own really is sensibly challenged and I found this very thought-provoking.

Our second strand is the true alien. In many ways there are section here of horror. Our poor human scientists are in the wrong place at the wrong time; isolated and possibly doomed. Tchaikovsky has the space mission in trouble storyline and then makes things even harder. Importantly we get to care about this group and their endless work to try and survive but ultimately, they meet something no one has seen before. Here we get a form of life that just speaks to human culture as just inherently wrong; and we get added body horror to the mix too. I’ve seen Tchaikovsky able to create horror before and there are scenes here of genuine disquiet especially as we enter the storyline’s final phase on top of which they deliver poignance as we watch one scientist try to teach the Octopods all he knows and yet they never quite get to bond – imagine never quite getting to communicate with someone you strongly believe should and can talk to you. This storyline is bittersweet and very important to creating the tension that races through the final act.

The last and important arc is our Portiid-Human alliance. Here it is great fun for the reader as Tchaikovsky allows to explore a new enhanced culture. They all get along but also spiders and Humans still not quite communicating. In fact, we see two groups exploring learning language (the use of vibrations and legs) and actual mind memory transfer. These are both fascinating ideas, but all come together in an unexpected direction. The latter crucial character is how Avrana Kern has developed from antagonistic scientist to a self-aware artificial intelligence and yet Nod possibly offers her the chance to discover something like herself. This storyline pushes at our nature for discovery, to seek a mystery out and solve it. But also and importantly to build bridges and links with the world we are part of.

In all these storylines we get the issue of communication. How to get you to experience the world as others see it. How to make you be understood and perhaps that is the greatest part of recognising intelligent life it is how we learn to recognise life and also respond to it – the act of empathy. Not taking things because we want them to serve us. This could very easily have just been a wham bam space adventure with monsters to tackle and worlds to save but the story becomes bigger and also has a bigger subject can you learn to do or be better than you are? Children of Ruin builds upon Children of Time a great deal and challenges the reader by far less recognizably human forms of life that we may initially shy away from (and just consider that by this book we see spiders as like us. But ultimately, I find this novel a hopeful tale that we can do better. I am hugely impressed and highly recommend it.

Join me soon for a look at the newest book in the series – Children of Memory