Children of Ruin

Adrian Tchaikovsky

I read this after waffling on other books, hoping that Tchaikovsky would capture the same energy from Children of Time (which I felt was a tall order). I feel that this book was a good continuation of the previous, even though the previous ended well. Many of the same themes were present, exploring the idea of alien races "uplifted" by Human hands as humanity's home planet descends into ruin. It explores the differences in societies because of different special behaviors well, and I enjoyed these explorations. That said, this book took even longer to draw me in than Children of Time, which I thought was close to the end of what I was reasonably willing to wait through. I think the execution of the introduction could have gotten to the meat of things faster, and tried to do too much by weaving between different storylines early.