Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky

Truly the most unique alien story I’ve ever seen.

Review

8/10

It does not reach the height of The Three-Body Problem, but then it’s only the first book, and if compared to the first book of TTBP, then Children of Time is probably better.

The spider’s pov is what makes this book so unique, but it also makes you not able to fully immerse yourself in the story, because they are spiders!! Oh okay it is so injustice that spider males are literal slaves of spider females, but who the fuck cares?

I really wish this book to be adapted into a movie or show. I need to see a movie spending half of the time on spiders, with armored spiders, spider cities, spider astronauts, and ant computers, etc.

Cool storytelling trick

The way the spider story is told is pretty brilliant. Though never explained, spiders are obviously short-lived. And from the point of view of evolution, it doesn’t even matter how long a life is. So how do you tell the story of infinite generations? Through family trees. Like humans, spiders have family names passed down through generations, with females inheriting the name from their mothers, and males probably from their fathers? I’m not sure about this. But anyway, throughout countless generations, three names are consistent: Portia, Bianca, and Fabian.

Portia holds the position of leader of the spider race. In ancient times, Portia was renowned as the best warrior and adventurer. As spiders progressed into a more civilized age, Portia’s descendants evolved into prominent scholars, scientists, and political leaders among the spiders.

Bianca, in the past, was a specialized warrior alongside Portia I think, but later became a specialized scholar working under Portia.

Fabian was the small male spider serving Portia with higher capabilities than most of his male counterparts. In one generation, Fabian invented a way to more effectively control ants while working under Portia. He then utilized the knowledge to start a gender revolution, forcing females to give males equal rights. Afterward, Fabian became a family of best scholars.

This storytelling technique is indeed brilliant, and it works, tho a bit unrealistic. How would the fate of the spider race always be dictated by the three spider families? Human nobles rise and fall, and although Einstein discovered relativity, shaping modern physics, ancient Einsteins did not conquer the world.

Of course, spiders in this world can pass down understandings, so perhaps when the ancient Portias were so successful and preserved so many useful understandings, the descendant would have the edge over others, and then the advantages just grow like a snowball. However, money is like that too, yet the wealth still comes and goes. The world is simply too random.

Better to just think of it as a storytelling trick, enabling the author to tell generations of stories without either utilizing cryogenic sleep or confusing the readers with dozens of names.

Rooms for improvement

I feel like so many things in the book can be improved, and if they were, it would have been an easy 9. The potential is there.

The characters of the spaceship are pretty forgettable. There are no character developments, and the characters are not well-written.

The ant computer thing is pretty interesting, but even if it works, it is supposed to be super slow isn’t it?. Yet it feels like an electronic computer in the book with little latency.

I think the religious dictatorship arc and the spider gender revolution arc should either be trimmed or be more complete. There should be more reasons backing the dictatorship and the self-deification, and there should be more implications in making male spiders equal. Is the productivity or the speed of tech evolution doubled? How does it affect the spider world in the long term? Also, the build-up of the spaceship generation is non-existent.

Story

So the story is basically like this. Human beings conquered the entire universe as an empire. Not only did they colonize many planets, but they also started trying to create alien lives. They terraformed many planets already full of life, and then threw some epic virus that would speed up the evolution process by giving affected creatures some cheats. For example, they can pass down the knowledge they learn, giving their descendants huge advantages. But then a war broke out on the earth and everything’s destroyed, including the outer space colonies, through some electronic virus.

There are of course still some people left on the earth. An ice age came and contained all the poisons, making the earth liveable tho barely, and then the ice age passed. They started to develop civilization again, but then the poison was also released, making the earth inhabitable, so they built an epic ark ship with many human cargos in cryogenic sleep, and sent it out, with the purpose of finding another planet to live in.

After many many years, the ark ship discovered a terraformed planet. The lead scientist, Kern, of the project survived the destruction of the old empire, and uploaded herself to the computer on the satellite of the planet. Though the monkeys on the planet did not evolve as planned, spiders did, and by that time spiders had already reached a degree of civilization. The ark ship wanted to land on the planet, but was denied by Kern with far more advanced old empire tech, and was sent to another terraforming project planet.

Not sure how many years had passed, spiders had reached a high degree of civilization and had developed advanced tech under the guidance of Kern. Kern warned them about the danger of the ark ship, and rushed them into a space age the ark ship, on the other hand, utilized some old empire tech on another terraforming project station. But the planet was not habitable, and the ark ship was starting to have problems, so they headed back to Kern’s planet and prepared to colonize it at all costs.

The story ended in the clash between the last humans and the newly civilized intelligent spiders nurtured under an old empire project. Though the ark ship destroyed some of the spider cities on the planet, spiders invaded the ship and killed a lot of humans mainly through poison. In the end, the spiders captured the ship, and injected a stripped-down version of the virus into the remaining crew, forcing them to embrace the spiders with peace, and then what’s left of humans and spiders lived happily together on the planet ever since.

Quotes

Give me a force of ants and I shall defeat their army.

Behind her defiance there was a terrible desperation: a woman who had always been able to simply physically impose her will on the world, who now had to ask its permission and the permission of her own body.

Reading log

I bought this book when I was traveling in Glasgow. I was so excited when saw the book, because I had been wanting to read this book for quite a long time. It has been praised over and over on Reddit countless times. So I bought this book as a souvenir.

I came into the book with no knowledge about the book other than it is good, but the book still surprised me so much. I had no idea I would be reading a book through the eyes of spiders! Who would have thought?

It took me 2 months. I was voraciously reading it when I was still in school, living in the dorm, but then I came back home, and then into the military camp. Fortunately I was infected with Influenza A virus in the camp, and was home-quarantined for a whole week. Lucky me.