Revisiting Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time

It's been almost four years since I read Adrian Tchaikovsky's gem, Children of Time but I feel the need to revisit it. I found it shortly after tackling the sci-fi classic Dune. Unlike Dune there's no desert mystique, no magic dust that enhances your senses, and no Messianic figure; but there is the same gravity of time. Both contain worlds that feel ancient. Each gives me the distinct feel that the universe within each cover has always existed and would continue to exist long after the back cover closes for the last time in hand. A feeling that I credit to each author's intense world building. 

In Children of Time , the Messianic figure is replaced with a scientist, Dr. Avrana Kern, that fancies herself a creator god with an old testament wrath against humanity's imperfections but in her cryogenic absence, her best laid plans go awry. Her gene editing viruses choose the wrong target and accelerated evolution does the rest. Time is the true God of creation in Adrian Tchaikovsky's universe. Time gives and time takes away. A new race is born and their unknowing mother, Dr. Avrana Kern, is reduced to a frozen shadow of her former self suspended far longer than she ever intended. 

And yet, humanity endures. The terraformed planet Kern had devised for her genetically perfect progeny is an island in an endless black ocean and the only destination for a drifting ark of humanity's lost children. Something fearful and wonderful is waiting on the surface for these wanders and any reader will be delighted by the surprise of how the meeting between beings unfolds. Where some writers wax pessimistic and leave humanity to the void Tchaikovsky gives his readers a glimmer of hope that in an infinite universe even the improbable can happen. And I'll leave the rest to you. I've enjoyed this book and I hope that you will as well. Children of Time is the first installment in a four-part series. 

Happy Reading!

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