Oh Adrian, you crazy amazing story teller! Another mind bending book that completely surprised me and blew my mind. A bit too long as was the case with the other books but still, wow!

So, finally hit something by Adrian Tchaikovsky that I have found less than compelling. "The Children of Memory."

This is the novel equivalent of a meeting that should have been an e-mail. It would have been dandy as a novella maybe.

It’s way, way too long and convoluted for the admittedly cool-idea premise. The out-of-order and shifting perspectives makes for a non-compelling read despite serving the ultimate reveal.

That said, world-building in this novel is exactly what you’ve come to expect from Tchaikovsky and is intricate and interesting. And, as always, his alien races are truly alien and also really interesting. But it’s just that, intellectual interest and recognition of a cool concept. I just couldn’t have affection for any of them, even our two protagonists.

This was a slog for me. I got about halfway through and put it down for several months and then finished because I felt it deserved it and it does. Cool idea. Should have been much, much shorter. Not everything has to be a novel.

While Children of Time will always be my favorite in this series, this was a solid entry in this trilogy. I really like that each novel focuses on a particular creature, and I did not expect birds for this one, but it was an interesting premise. The plot itself was very thought provoking, and it will stay with me for a while. My biggest criticism with this series is that the stories lack intimacy with the characters at times, so I feel as though I don't get to know them as well as I prefer. However, this one was very character focused, and I got to spend time getting to know the characters and their motivations. I feel as though the ending will be a bit of a hit or miss for readers. I enjoyed it and thought it was a satisfying conclusion. Overall I recommend this series to readers who love smart science fiction and enjoy though provoking concepts.

Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit for providing a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was requested when I first found out about NetGalley and I had requested so many ARCs that I could not get to all of them before they were archived. I really wanted to get to this one, as it seemed interesting. I also did not realize when requesting this one that it was a part of a series and not the first one! I am giving this book three stars, as I don't want to give it a good or bad rating, since I did not get to it.

The third volume in the Children of Time series, Children of Memory is the story of Liff, just a girl trying to survive on a harsh planet, and her teacher Miranda, who the townspeople describe as somewhat odd.

I'd venture to say that Memory was probably the most human story of this (so far) trilogy. We spend a lot of time with Liff and thus spend a lot of time in her head. She's a wonderfully fleshed out character who is easy to empathize with. The story did get a little convoluted at times but not enough to prevent me from reading. Time is still my favorite of this series, and I'd say that Memory is my second favorite.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC. I liked this book a lot.

This is a book that is going to require a reread from me. It was a fascinating, confusing, wonderful, agonizing, mind-bending read. I really enjoyed it, but was frustrated by it at the same time. I understand and appreciate the intentional complexity and confusion written in the book to keep you guessing on what is real and what is simulated. However, it may have been taken just a step too far to make it understandable in the end. I plan to reread the book to see if there was a detail that I may have missed here or there that may tie things together a bit better.

All that being said, I truly enjoyed the book and will recommend it to anyone that would be interested in this genre. Adrian Tchaikovsky is one of my top authors and I look forward to anything he releases, especially the follow-on to Children of Memory. I loved the complexity of the characters (Miranda, Kern, Liff) and their woven storylines and interactions throughout the book. The overlapping timelines, glimpses into other times, and the various character interations kept me guessing throughout the book. I didn't fully grasp what was happening until the final pages, and even then there are more questions than answers.

I will admit, given the way Children of Ruin ended and the way Children of Memory started, I was hoping for more of a galaxy hopping adventure, discovering and observing various lifeforms and human settlements. I am still pleased with how Children of Memory turned out, but I am hoping for more discovery in the next book!

One ship of humans have finally come to their new home, a planet that should've been terraformed to be perfect for their survival. But facing an imperfect new home and a no option be to attempt survival, they set forth to build and sustain their colony. Fast forward, when strangers arrive to town full of the townspeople fearful of strangers, it soon becomes clear that something is very amiss.

This was actually my favorite of the series. While there is still a time shift between present day and the past, this story feels a bit more narrow in scope, which made it easier to follow and for me to get invested in what was going on in the characters. The twist that brings everything together was unexpected and I really ended up enjoying the outcome of that. We still get some time with our favorite unfailingly superior Kern character as well as a connection to the previous too books, so it's not totally independent of them. Overall, recommend.

Thank you to the author, Orbit Books, and Netgalley for the advanced ecopy of the book!

It took me multiple tries to actually get into this series and I'm kind of glad it's over. I enjoyed how the past books focused more on space travel, but this one was set pretty much in one location and it was a bit boring for me. I did enjoy the plot twist (which would be spoilers to talk about WHY I liked it) but it wasn't enough for me to love this. The first two books felt like a lot of build up for something that just didn't happen in this book, but I'm hoping the companion series will give me more of the "epic space opera" I was looking for.

Back on my Adrian Tchaikovsky shilling! Thank you Hachette Audio, Orbit, and Netgalley for ebook and audio ARCs.

"Children of Memory" is the 3rd in The Children of Time series. So far humanity has escaped to the stars after ruining the earth and had some terraforming and uplifting projects succeed so that we have a society of capital H Humans working with Spider and Octopus societies. A crew exploring the cosmos finds signs of another far flung remnant of humanity, the crew of the Enkidu. And then nuttiness occurs.

Mel Hudson continues their narration of this space opera and I love the voice of Avrana Kern.

Reasons to read:
-I dislike spiders but the first book made me like the cast of them, how
-A story in which we aren't just blasting everything that is different from us
-The CATHARSIS for Miranda, "You were the me I'd have wanted to be. The me we needed" Had to lay down after that
-From an animal science POV all the interactions are fascinating
-The reasoning for the main event is just so damn hopeful

Adrian Tchaikovsky takes the Children of Time series in an unexpected direction in Children of Memory -- and not one that I fully loved. I enjoyed the book well enough, but the story is so different than what I enjoyed about previous books that I found it hard not to be a bit underwhelmed. However, even while Children of Memory isn't a personal favorite, I know it'll resonate with other fans.

An earth colony is barely surviving. Life is hard and things seem to be getting worse. Then strangers come from the sky offering an alternative. The only thing people give up is going to the stars.

Tchaikovsky has produced another master work of evolutionary science fiction! I was surprised by the perspective readers were introduced to with the character Liff, and more than a little confused by the choice of non-chronological storytelling at first. I was foolish to doubt Tchaikovsky and am happy to say that the decision was completely justified and in retrospect actually served to peak my curiosity to find out why.
Tchaikovsky once again led us on a journey of unique evolution, terraforming, ark-ships, and philosophical dilemmas regarding individuality and Humanity, capital H, all the while keeping us fully engaged in the high stakes exploration narrative of some of my favorite characters from the previous entries in the series.
My only substantive complaint is probably a non-factor to most fans of the series. I just really wanted to hear more about Meshna from Children of Ruin. Alas, Adrian Tchaikovsky forgot to ask me before he published this amazing work.
I have supreme confidence in his storytelling and look forward to devouring everything he produces from here on!

Children of Memory is the 3rd in a series of truly wild speculative fiction. The creativity, scientific principles, multi-species points of view, and expansive timelines offer a very unique world building canvas and Tchaikovsky takes full advantage. Though each book in the series exists in the same universe and has a lot of characters carryover, the major themes and story feel very different. Children of Memory focuses on the human (little h) explorers from one of the arkships that fled a dying earth and their hardscrabble lives on their new planet. We see a major divergence from the previous two books in the series because no uplift virus is applied here and the motley crew of explorers studying the planet appear more interested in preserving the culture than imprinting their own. It ultimately leads to a story about agency, sense of self, and sentience. There is still plenty of hard science to be found but far more than the previous books in the series this story veers into the soft sciences. While it is a nice twist on the formula and feels like it avoids resting on the laurels of the first two books in the series, I think this one strayed a little too far from the path for me. It may be my own knowledge and curiosity holding me back but the book gradually became more and more confusing and hard to follow. Though rapt throughout the early portion of the book by the end I was going through the motions more often than not. Rather than re-reading certain passages trying to understand what I was reading I would just move on and hope enough was absorbed to keep things on the rails. I love this series and eagerly look forward to reading another if it is written, but this one felt like the weakest of the bunch so far.

First published in Great Britain in 2022; published by Orbit on January 31, 2023

Children of Memory is the third book in a trilogy. While the books are connected by a shared history and a few characters, they tell independent stories. It isn’t necessary to read the first two novels to enjoy the third.

After a very long journey from Earth, a ship full of sleeping humans arrive at Imir. The ship is on its last legs. Some of the pods in which humans sleep are ruined, but most passengers are still alive. Unfortunately, the terraforming seeds that were planted on Imir long ago have only barely taken root. The planet has no predators because it has no life at all, apart from the primitive algae and such that the terraformers seeded. Imir might sustain a small settlement that works hard to grow the right crops and breed the right animals, but it won’t sustain the thousands on the ship.

All but a handful of settlers are left in orbit in the hope that they can one day be brought to the surface. That hope dims when the landers that operate between the surface and the orbiting ship break down. The survivors who make it to the planet must live with the guilt of leaving so many behind.

That’s a great concept for a story, but it’s only one part of Children of Memory. Before they travel to the surface, the colonists detect a radio signal. They pinpoint its origin and decide to build their settlement nearby, but they are too busy with the struggle for survival to investigate it. When they finally establish a foothold, the captain goes into the hills to find the signal’s source. What happens to him? Three hundred years later, nobody is quite sure.

In an earlier novel, a terraforming project gone wrong caused spiders with uplifted intelligence to evolve on another planet. The uploaded mind of the woman behind the terraforming (Avrana Kern) and one of the spiders, as well as a pair of birds and additional aliens that appeared in the second novel, make their way to Imir on a grand tour of planets that were seeded with life. What they find on Imir is puzzling.

A woman named Miranda, who thinks of herself as human but is something more than that, is dispatched to investigate. She plays the role of a teacher and befriends a young girl named Liff, who somehow remembers witnessing the entire history of the planet, including events that occurred long before she was born.

Miranda realizes that the colony is falling apart. Crops are failing, animals are not reproducing, machinery has broken down. She wants desperately to help while the colonists, wary of outsiders who have suddenly appeared, don’t trust her. A mythology of “others” has evolved during the colony’s brief existence. In tough times, it is always good to blame your problems on others. Perhaps the others managed to escape from the orbiting ship and set up a competing civilization. Perhaps the other are indigenous. Miranda claims to be from an outlying farm but she’s the only obvious evidence that “others” exist. She’s in danger of being lynched because lynching “others” is what humans do. The society’s development of an “us versus them” mindset, even in the absence of a “them,” is a smart take on human nature.

After some time passes, Kern loses track of Miranda. She sends the birds to find her. The birds excel at solving puzzles but are baffled by what they find. Nothing on Imir is what it seems to be. Liff thinks Kern is a witch but the truth is more complicated.

The story jumps around in time. That’s a common literary trick, but here the shifting time frames have a larger purpose. They make sense in the overall context of the story for reasons that won’t be revealed until the novel nears its end. A shift back to the day the colonists first landed on Imir, told in one of the novel’s concluding chapters, provides a satisfying view of events from the reader’s new perspective. Mastery of plot development and storytelling is one of the reasons I keep coming back to Adrian Tchaikovsky.

The story’s most poignant moments surround the choice to leave thousands in suspended animation so that a relative handful have a chance to survive. A later decision to allow couples to reproduce taxes the colony’s limited resources, making it even harder to justify bringing more people down to the planet’s surface. I enjoyed thinking about the moral uncertainties of such difficult choices.

Scenes of pioneering, while abbreviated, give a sense of how difficult it would be to sustain life on a planet that has never supported life. Intermittent debates about the differences between instinct and intelligence, body and mind, sentience and artificial intelligence, simulation and reality, add the philosophical depth at which Tchiakovsky excels. Science fiction is a perfect showcase for such debates, and these are both intriguing and relevant to the plot.

RECOMMENDED

I'm a little late in reviewing this arc but I'm glad I finally did! I devoured this book in two days and I gotta say... It didn't quite live up to the hype in the first couple of installments.

The story itself is a solid 3 stars. I bumped it up to 4 stars because Adrian Tchaikovsky's writing is *chef's kiss.* It's intellectual without being too pedantic. And on the sci-fi side, it straddles the line between sci-fi for the masses and hard sci-fi.

The issue I had with this book (that I didn't have with the first two) is that it focused a lot on a group of human settlers. I missed the spiders and the octopuses, and while we still had our core crew with Portia, Fabian, and Paul (plus Kern and Miranda), it wasn't the same.

The nonlinear timeline was also confusing. I know it's supposed to add to the mystery, but I couldn't make the connections until halfway through the book. When I finally had the a-ha! moment, I thought it'd be smooth sailing. But then the author throws another wrench in the story and it mostly left me confused as to the point of the entire book. Like I get it, and the plot twist was kinda cool and all, but like... Why though?

I'd definitely read more of Tchaikovsky's work, but this wasn't really a satisfying conclusion to a series that I came to love.

Thank you to Orbit Books and NetGalley for this arc.

What a fantastic conclusion to what has been one of the greatest Space Operas in recent memory. Everything gets tied together and resolved in beautiful fashion and Tchaikovsky has cemented himself as one of the greatest SF writers of our generation. I plan on reviewing the entire series in one post on the blog soon!

“ ‘Sentience,’ adds Gethli. ‘Is what is a what? And, if so, what?’ ‘You think,’ Kern all but accuses them.’ You’d think we think,’ he either answers or gives back a mangled echo. ‘But we have thought about the subject, and come to the considered conclusion that we do not think. All that passes between us and within us is just mechanical complexity.’ ”

“ ‘Think of it this way. You’re an alien symbiote incorporating an encoded memory of a human woman, whom you’re currently <spoiler> simulating </spoiler> with sufficient fidelity, that you can believe you’re her. I’m a <spoiler> simulation </spoiler> of a different human woman who was encoded into a computer, and then spent far too long as ants before being decanted into this blank body. We neither of us have much in the way of intellectual property rights, now do we?’ “

No one could ever claim that this author lacks in ideas. This book continues the story of a terraformed planet. It explores memory, sentience and identity in the author’s usual intelligent and witty way. The spiders and octopuses from the prior books were less prominent in this book, but it has birds. My favorite book of this trilogy (possibly series) was the first, but I really enjoyed the last 20% of this book and the concepts presented there.

I was listening to the audiobook, but I also had the ebook. Since the book skips around among many points of view, it was helpful that the ebook chapter headings identified who was speaking. I read the second book in this trilogy in 2019. Frankly, I remember almost nothing about the first two books. I don’t recommend reading this book as a standalone, and if it has been a while since you read the other books you might want a refresher. I sort of managed to keep up with this book, but I’m sure that I missed a lot, even though the beginning of the book recapped earlier events.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

I've read several books by Adrian Tchaikovsky and have enjoyed them all. This one was no different and is a great installment in the Children of Time series. Fast paced, and easy to follow along with characters I've come to know and love. His books grab you and keep you wanting to read more. I highly recommend this book.

I am so torn and confused about how to write this review because I had a love hate relationship with this book. I absolutely loved children of time. It is quite possibly one of the best books I have ever read. But this one, I do not know how to feel about it.

It had a strong start, but as it went on I cared about it less and less, I felt the story was going no where and I was honestly getting bored. And by 50 percent in, I just wanted to get it over with and finish it.

DiscIaimer: received the ebook from the publisher through netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

"She has a to-do list that would last longer than she would"

This was the first book in netgalley i was approved for (which honestly came as a shock). Thus the journey began : I had to start reading from the beginning of the series to the end and although I ruined my reading plans, I still didn't make it to the finish-line in time ! I started children of time mid December and at the moment of writing this review, it is mid February.

My opinion is that the overall quality of the books declines through the series. The first book, Children of Time, was remarkable. A sci-fi dystopian future, humans looking for new homes and a species of spiders becoming more intelligent as generations pass, and defending their home at the end of that book (I know : so many spoilers but if you're reading this review, I assume you've already read the other two books). The second book, Children of Ruin, was not bad but could have been better. My favourite part of that book was those chapters talking about the past, humans in a new planet with alien life, the ethical question whether they should terraform the new planet, and the alien parasite who took control of their bodies. That action scene ? It was mesmerizing!

As for the third book, Children of Memory, it was not my cup of tea. First off, I try avoiding spoilers. Also, I just realized the relation between names and the overall story in each book.

The third book is a sci-fi psychological horror story. A genre that I do not like. There is more focus on elements of mystery and psychological horror in this book. The story is told with time and location jumps : Once You reach the end of the book, and I mean the real ending, every thing starts to makes sense.

There are the return of the usual casts at the beginning of the book, addition of a new specie and a new member. That said, the old cast act as just a group of familiar names. I did not sense any arc and character development for any of them. The book is story-driven just like the two previous books but with the major difference of a story which takes a lot of time and pages to shape and be solved.

And now, at the very end, I do have my complaints about the series. I would say the story could have wrapped up much sooner. The story in this book could have been something between a novella and a novel. As for the overall, I do not see a complete story and timeline that has been told through three books. Each book has a little foundation role for the next instalment and it's own complete story. Maybe these complaints arise from that side of my character that loves reading fantasy and loves to find character development, timeline and a finish-line in a series.

Final words : If you love sci-fi, definitely pick up this series. If you want to try sci-fi, definitely read the first book.