This is the fourth book in the 'Children of Time' series, but it can be read as a standalone. To bring readers up to speed (or refresh their memories), Tchaikovky provides a précis of the previous novels in a foreword. Tchaikovky's synopsis is detailed, but I'll boil it down to a nutshell.
Background (very briefly): Earth is approaching environmental destruction, and humanity decides to branch out to the stars. Brilliant scientist Avrana Kern devises ways to terraform distant planets to make them hospitable for Earth life.
Kern develops a nanovirus that speeds up evolution, intending to uplift lower primates to human status. Instead, the nanovirus upgrades Portiids (spiders), octopuses, and stomatopod crustraceans (mantis shrimp), all of whom develop sophisticated societies with advanced technology.
At the same time, a planet named Nod is found to harbor an alien organism that is a composite of microbial life. The Nodan organism has perfect recall of its entire past and can invade other beings and take over their minds. In time, humans and Nodans are able to form joint organisms that retain separate identities.
After much difficulty, strife, wars, and negotiation, things settle down. Humans, intelligent invertebrates, and Nodan beings develop a rapprochement and are able to undertake joint missions.
By now, Avrana Kern has made herself immortal by becoming an uploaded artificial mind. So Kern can be EVERYWHERE, in every spaceship/environment hosting her lifeforms.
*****
Children of Strife toggles among three stories in three timelines that eventually converge. I'm going to provide a very quick overview of each narrative, being circumspect to avoid spoilers.
✨✨ The First Age: Planet Hartland
This story is narrated by Redina Kott, a sociopathic troublemaker who delights in ruining people's lives just for fun. Kott hides her intentions behind a permanent fake smile.
In this storyline, billionaire Gerey Hartmand is a megalomaniac and implacable rival of Avrana Kern. Hartmand viciously fights Kern for terraforming rights, but she wins and he loses. So Kern gets almost all the suitable exoplanets and Kern is left with one distant world to prepare for human habitation.
Hartmand acquires a terraforming ship run by an AI, and assembles a team of four narcissistic visionaries with god complexes: Sui Dorcherson, Ken Pil, Ottis Milner, and Redina Kott. Collectively, the crew specialize in geosciences, biosciences, cybernetics, and logistics. The visionaries arrive at their exoplanet - which Hartmand names 'Hartland' - and proceed to apply their terraforming methods.
The plan is to start with artificial organic soil rich in biological and geochemical elements, and a handful of engineered microbes. First, the microbes would liberate oxygen, pump out heat, and free water. Then, as the environment changed, the microbes would mutate, evolve into increasingly complex life forms, and approach Earth-standards. "In the models it had become a livable world in just a few years, ready for trees and bears and whatever you wanted. And people."
The plan fails time and time again until Pil makes an adjustment resulting in unregulated growth of fungi and bugs....enormous bugs.
Hartmand's team tries all kinds of fixes, but things approach disaster territory. I don't want to give away too much, so let's say the Hartmand contingent proceeds with a novel idea.
For fun, here's a depiction of Ken Pil, an aging genius innovator:. "Pil was in his sling as usual, and had a bare, calloused foot up on one of the panels....He was using it to push off from occasionally, to keep him swinging...He had a face that had outgrown its own cosmetic surgery, so that parts of it were wrinkling at different rates, sagging here, taut there...He was a wizard of head candy with a clientele of one [and] had a whole pharmacopeia of elixirs that had exact and calibrated effects on him."
*****
✨✨The Second Age - Ark Ship Marduk
Many thousands of years after the First Age, Earth is on its last tether, no longer able to sustain life. Ark ships are being launched to carry people to exoplanets that (hopefully) will be suitable for humanity.
Lamya Cosimir is tapped to be captain of the ark ship Marduk, whose destination is chosen because of an unearthed ancient recording.
In translation, the recording says: "I say to you, my followers, my faithful, when you are at your utmost of fear and deprivation, know that there is a place prepared for you. I have made a world only for you...Build your ships and come to me, for only here in all the sky can be found perfection. I, Gerey Harmand, decree it."
Humanity is desperate, and ark ships are being sent to ANY potentially hospital planet, so the authorities decide to give Harmand's destination a shot.
Cosimir's crew consists of a security chief, engineering team, science team, project manager, classicist, and a few others, with a cargo of thousands of people in pods - to populate the new planet.
The Marduk launches and travels for millennia, with the crew and cargo in a sleep state. When the Marduk arrives at what (we know) is Hartland, the crew wakes up and sees a planet that has infrastructure and seems conducive to human life. However, no one greets the Marduk, and there's some peculiar massive growth from the planet into the vacuum of space.
Cosimir and the crew make startling discoveries, and when the Marduk becomes endangered, they scramble to wake up the pod residents and get them down to the planet.
For interest, here's the condition of the cargo when the Marduk arrives at its destination: "Seventeen percent...cargo spoilage...seventeen was higher than predicted, and of course you always harboured some mad dream of zero. Seventeen percent of their cargo was showing as dead...Someone who had gone to sleep on Earth, having faith in the technology, the system, the good intentions of it all, but they'd never wake up."
*****
✨✨ The Third Age - The Research Vessel Dissenter
Many thousands of years have passed since The Second Age. The Dissenter, a research vessel run by the Avrana Kern AI, has been through hard times; the crew has been at odds; and the vessel has been separated into two parts.
What I'll call 'Part A' of Dissenter harbors the following occupants:
Captain Cato - a stomatopod as large as a human whose claws and appendages contain powerful guns/cannons. True to his combative stomatopod nature, Cato takes offense at everything, and his first instinct is to punch, injure, and kill....even his own crewmates. For this reason, Cato constantly struggles to restrain himself.
Alis - Alis is a human researcher who was removed from Imir, a world where she lived in endless alternate realities. Because of this, Alis has trouble recognizing the real world, and she's been in therapy with a counselor called Mira.
Portia and Fabian - Portia and Fabian are large spiders who do research. The portiids dislike each other, so it's a wrench when both their minds are uploaded into a single spider-shaped robot called Portifabian. The rival intellects struggle to perform as a single entity, and speak in garbled sentences and have confused thoughts. Eventually they work it out.
What I'll call 'Part B' of Dissenter contains the following occupants:
Helena, Galean, Leus, and Polonius - human and spider researchers.
Mira - Mira, a therapist, is a combination human woman and Nodal organism. This gives her extraordinary abilities. Mira has been counseling Alis, and the two 'women' look remarkably alike.
As soon as Dissenter gets to the vicinity of (what we know as) planet Hartland, Part B goes close to investigate the world. Problems ensue, and Mira takes a pod that crash lands on the planet.
When Captain Cato, Alis, and Portifabian in Dissenter Part A go to search for their companions, they're alerted by Mira's beacon on the planet. The threesome+ mount a rescue operation and have a rough landing, but luckily, their vehicle can repair itself.
I don't want to give away too much, so I'll just say there's a colony of humans on Hartland that live in a walled community called Four Dragon Ford. The colony seems like a combination of 20th century Earth and ancient Greece. The residents have weapons - guns, lasers, and flame throwers, but they make sacrifices to appease the 'Life'- the organic components of the planet.
Once all survivors from Dissenter are on Hartland, all the parts of the book come together.
For illustration, here's Cato communicating:. "Cato, in fact, has been signaling to Kern. The gestural language he's using is exceptionally rich and full of qualifiers, imparted by the motions of various parts of his limbs and body...plus an amount of subtext communicated pheromonally through the water... The colours, a panoply of iridescences, sheens, hues, eyespots and metallic patches, all interacting very deliberately with the light."
****
The science fiction in this series focuses on biology and evolution, and the author is obviously concerned about climate change and over-exploitation of the Earth. It would be great if series like 'Children of Time' helped convince doubters, but I'm not hopeful. There are people whose drive for personal wealth and power overrides concern for the planet, and 'head in the sand syndrome' spreads down the line.
This is an excellent continuation of the series. Highly recommended to sci-fi fans.
Thanks to Netgalley, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Orbit for an ARC of the book.
Rating: 4 stars
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