Children of Time
2015
- fiction
- science fiction
- life on other planets
- habitable planets
- fiction, science fiction, general
- planets
- end of the world
- dystopias
- survival
- human-alien encounters
The story
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home. Following their ancestor's star maps, they discovered the greatest treasure of a past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New monsters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare. Now two civilisations are on a collision course and must fight to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?
What it’s like
Cold, claustrophobic ship corridors under sickly emergency strip-lights give way to a humid world of rust-coloured forest, silk-threaded canopies and dappled green light, and the book moves between the two with a restless, technical clarity. Its close third-person chapters switch between perspectives and species, so the pace stays brisk and the sense of scale keeps widening. Sound lives in the details: machinery hum, leaves rustling, and a world of vibration and scent that makes the alien environment feel physically present. The tone is tense, curious and occasionally tender, following a long, slow arc in which two very different minds learn to trust across a gulf of biology and history. Violence is frequent and sometimes brutal, with battles, predation and deaths rendered plainly, though rarely lingered on for gore. It suits a long train journey or a focused evening alone, for readers who want big ideas about evolution and first contact delivered through hard-edged, gripping storytelling rather than comfort.
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