Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Started: February 7, 2024

Completed: May 27, 2025

Recommendation: Highly recommended

Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

Tchaikovsky has developed a whole other way for intelligent life to form.  Saying anything so easily gives things away.  The stressed characters have to deal with extreme circumstances and that stress changes how they interact with each other and how they view themselves.  There are some big changes.  Meanwhile, the world building is awesome and the ideas put forward are truly mind bending.

I truly enjoyed the interview at the end of the audio book.

Children of Memory, Adrian Tchaikovsky

Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky is the next book in the Children of Time series.

Started: November 7, 2024
Completed: November 11, 2024
Recommendation: Highly recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

"Blame is really credit for what has gone wrong."  This quotation epitomizes this book, I think.  Context matters and this book is a look at context in general and context in the scope of what it means to be intelligent.  I have found this series fascinating and this book does not disappoint thought it flies off in a wholly unexpected direction (as though the previous books were not equally novel).  Tchaikovsky keeps me thinking and that is a wonderful and fun thing.  I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Children of Ruin, Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky is the second book in the Children of Time series.

Started: October 24, 2024
Completed: October 27, 2024
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

oleaginous -- rich in, covered with, or producing oil

Review:

This series really looks a different ways to see intelligence.  It is really quite amazing and Tchaikovsky does a really good job of showing how things might look dramatically different to different forms of intelligence.  I have really enjoyed this series.

Service Model, Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Started: August 8, 2024
Completed: August 10, 2024
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

What a great book!  Future dystopia, but from the robot's perspective.  Pretty darn awesome.  I love how quickly Tchaikovsky got me to believe that something which was clearly a robot was also sentient.  Dystopia bad.  Robot perspective, excellent!

City of Last Chances, Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Started: 07/27/2023
Completed: 8/3/2023
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This is a rich collection of characters against the backdrop of invasion.  It is hard to say that there has been a loss of way of life, but there has certainly been an overwhelming change.  A motley crew of characters tries to navigate the changes and, at least slightly, to fight back.  This is not a book of revolt, but is much more a book of character development in a rich tapestry of life.  Of course, this is not a life that any of us would recognize so there is a fair amount of world building that goes into it.  Really enjoyable and rich.  Well worth the time.

Children of Time, Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky the first book in the Children of Time series

Started: 7/29/2022
Completed: 9/10/2022
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Arthur C. Clarke Award

Review:

I listened to this book in the car and it was bad because I kept wanting to find a reason to go out to the car and listen to it.  If sentient spiders aren't your thing, then this is probably not the book for you--just sayin.  I really enjoyed the pace, timing, and novelty of this book.  The flipping back and forth between the humans and the spiders was excellent.  I did not see the end coming, although there are plenty of hints.  This was really a good book.

This book was richer because I also happened to be listening to An Immense World at the same time.  This helped me understand how different animals view the world differently from humans and the information both books meshed really well.