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Children of Time
- Narrated by: Mel Hudson
- Length: 16 hrs and 31 mins
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Summary
Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet.
Who will inherit this new Earth?
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life.
But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.
Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?
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- Simon
- 11-05-17
Tchaikovsky is still writing Symphonies!
This is genuine high-quality science fiction, in terms of pacing it's probably closer to Heinlein than Scalzi or Star Wars but it's innovative, well thought-out and fairly challenging. It's definitely at the thinking reader's end of sci-fi.
It has to be a clever book that gets you rooting for spiders and sympathising with them. This book covers issues of morality, decency, survival and has probably one of the most unique treatments of the age-old battle of the sexes I have ever read.
The treatment of time and lifespan is equally clever. There are almost three distinct timelines here. The relatively short-lived spiders together with the humans being able to engage in various uses of suspended animation could have resulted in a real mess with dozens and dozens of varied characters. I thought this was particularly well-covered with the implementation of a logical mechanism to provide consistency of character among the arachnids and longevity with key humans.
Mel Hudson does a fine job of the narration, no easy task this one making this in all a very high quality entry to the genre and I would echo Carl's thought's that we need more of this author on Audible. It seems Tchaikovsky is still writing Symphonies!
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81 people found this helpful
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- Damo
- 31-05-17
Brilliant
I enjoyed the originality of this book. It is told in such a way that I found myself rooting for both sides, and I felt the development of an 'alien' intelligence that is derived from something not alien at all was particularly interesting. The means by which the author deals with untold generations of spiders cohesively is also very clever.
My thanks to Adrian Tchaikovsky, and to Mel Hudson for bringing me on such an exciting, unpredictable journey. I highly recommend this book and will be looking out for more work from this author.
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67 people found this helpful
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- Paul Green
- 02-07-19
Felt cheated
Personally I think the synopsis is misleading which says that the book is about Humans colonizing a planet. Humans dont arrive on the planet until about a third of the way through the audiobook and even then most of the book is about spiders. Also I think Amazon should have a warning in the description as there is a fair amount of swearing in the book - not suitable for children IMO.
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63 people found this helpful
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- Max
- 06-07-17
Cool concept but average execution
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
I think I would use it in conversation because it raised some great discussion points, but no i would not recommend it to a friend. The narrator is really bland, and the writing, which showed promise in the first few chapters with the introduction of the first spider hunting in the terraformed world, it sloped off massively and never really recovered.
Would you be willing to try another book from Adrian Tchaikovsky? Why or why not?
Adrian Tchaikovsky would probably write good films. The book has a good cinematic feel to it and I really can see this book being adapted to the big screen, web cities, space battles with sentient spiders, hypersleep, ant colony supercomputers etc. But his skills as a writer leave much to be desired. I didn't care about any of the characters with the exception of the early hunting spiders in the jungle and Fabian, the male spider fighting for emancipation. The characterisation of even the human characters was sluggish and frustrating, and at the conclusion I found myself really ambivalent to who ended up on top. So thanks but no thanks.
Would you be willing to try another one of Mel Hudson’s performances?
Hell no. She's boring after the first chapter, her accents are laughable, and her dramatic monologue performances were really embarrassing.
Was Children of Time worth the listening time?
It was worth half the listening time. Some really cool concepts in it, I really liked the stuff about ants and the early hunting scenes, also charting the rise of a civilisation under different circumstances. But sadly no I think I would take back about 8 of those hours.
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35 people found this helpful
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- Dj Baldry
- 10-01-20
Average at best
To be totally honest, I don't know why this book has been given such high ratings, It's not that great really! Granted It has its moments where it starts to pick up but then loses its momentum. I listen to a lot of Sci-fi Audio books and I can say there is many better audio books to listen to than this.
I guess if Ray Porter read it then it might have been better.
Disappointing.
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34 people found this helpful
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- MissusWarren
- 14-06-17
A beautiful take on evolution and hope
Loved this. Was a deeply satisfying story of humanity and something else... Wonderfully thought out intricacies of the evolution to sentience from an entirely different point of view and cleverly written to encompass great swathes of time with continuity. Who knew you could feel such empathy for spiders. And empathy is the fundamental message for us all if we are to not only survive, but also thrive.
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34 people found this helpful
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- D. Menashy
- 02-07-17
A Web of delight.
An interesting concept, very well carried off. A story that's engaging populated by interesting characters. I know more about spiders than ever before, but in a good way!
Superbly narrated by Mel Hudson.
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17 people found this helpful
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- Gary Sereno
- 25-09-17
Good book, but at times forced.
I do like the concept behind this story and for much of the book it works well. However it at times also feels forced and some of the characters do not seem to fit roles that were meant to have been psychometrically assessed (as is explained behind the selection for one of the characters).
While towards the end it feels expected, partly due to it's forced nature, it also was not wholly predictable, which was nice.
Narration was decent, again not great, but certainly above average, which seems to just fit in with this book.
If you're after an exceptional story, I personally would recommend you give this one a miss, however if you want a decent book, which is slightly different, then this could be a tale for you.
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13 people found this helpful
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- MR
- 10-10-17
Unexpected gem
Awesome, wasn’t sure where it was headed but gripping from the beginning and literally weaves a clever story.
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12 people found this helpful
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- dot_stockport
- 30-05-18
Gobsmacking scope
This was a new and intriguing story which is well worth a listen... it might even change the way you think. The reason I personally didn't give it 5 stars was that, given the story, there is a lot of description and passive voice. Add to this the very measured tone of the narrator I found myself drifting off many times. It took 5 goes to listen to the last couple of chapters. So, all in all, worth a listen but it won't keep you on the edge of your seat despite end if humanity type peril.
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11 people found this helpful