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Thousands of years ago, Earth’s terraforming program took to the stars. On the world they called Nod, scientists discovered alien life — but it was their mission to overwrite it with the memory of Earth. Then humanity’s great empire fell, and the program’s decisions were lost to time.

Aeons later, humanity and its new spider allies detected fragmentary radio signals between the stars. They dispatched an exploration vessel, hoping to find cousins from old Earth.

But those ancient terraformers woke something on Nod better left undisturbed.

And it’s been waiting for them.

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I was a bit worried when I first started this book because the storyline just seemed like a re-skin of the first book. The feeling it gave was basically just Children of Time, but this time with squids. Because of this I put it down for a few months before getting back to it. 

Upon finishing Children of Ruin, I am not sure how I feel about the series so far. I absolutely loved the first book; it was such a different take on sci-fi that I hadn’t seen anywhere else that I remember cruising through it. 

I don’t know if it’s the fact that we are following “completely” different characters in the second book or that this story just didn’t grab me as much, but I found myself not overly motivated to read it at times.

I was trying to think of a way to describe it and I think the best I could come up with was that, for me, it felt a lot more like reading a historical fiction that was recounting events instead of telling a story. 

At the end of the day I did enjoy the book and do want to finish the trilogy, but I’m not really motivated to pick it up immediately. Which to anyone who knows my reading tendencies, that not a good sign. 

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s writing is so smooth and beautiful that it really helps pull you into the world, but for this one it never really grabbed me like his other books have.