Children of ruin

 Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky

Series: Children of time #2

Genre: Sci-Fi

Original publication date: May 14, 2019

Book description: 

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.

Thoughts:

This is told in two timelines. One happens after the finishing of the first book Children of time. Portiid and humans have been living in peace for a few years. and they decide to explore another part of the universe after receiving a signal coming from another star. Kern's technology has made possible the communication between the two races. 

Helena and Mershner are two examples of people working with Portiids in several communication gadgets to enable easier communication without depending on Kern and her copies to translate between them. Their united work enabled new technologies to be created and the science made leaps while in combination. But there are still clear divisions. Male and Female Portiid still struggle to overcome gender discrimination. Males are still considered feeble and less able and have to prove their worth by making more effort and the credit for their accomplishments not always given to them. 

At the same time, we follow another group of people who were part of a terraforming group led by Dr. Abrana Kren. They arrive at their destination and start investigating the two bodies they find, one is an ice cube and has no life whatsoever as they expected. But the other has a small atmosphere and to their huge surprise had life, small creatures but life had developed. The first commander  Baltiel and his second in command Disra Senkovi discuss what to do. In the group discussion they divide, a group will work on the terraforming as they had planned on the ice world and the second group will study and categorize the second world and work without disturbing the current lifeform. 

The time between their location and Earth is too big, it takes 30 years to get one signal from one point to the next so by the time they get a reply it's going to be already 60 years. They will continue their project and do what they consider their best interest in the preservation of natural life. 

Baltiel leaves Senkovi in charge of the terraforming team and he will oversee the study of the native life on the planet they name Nod. 

As in the first book, you start to get details, a combination of what happens then and what is happening now. It is slow to provide the details so you have very little idea initially what the danger we have and how to work on it. 

The ship of human-Portiid arrive to the ice planet and find ships of odd making and carrying creatures they do not recognize. The technology and communication they use are foreign for them. Each group is unsure if they are enemies or possible allies. 

Helena who was working with Portia in better communication between Portiid and humans takes a new urgent linguistic challenge. They need to be able to communicate with the native race. Time is against them, the Octopuses are nervous and seem to have mixed feelings towards humans. 

There seems to be something in Nod and part of their explorer party takes a dive into the planet trying to find the origin of the signal they received. That action alone makes their status more precarious with the Octopuses. The explorer cannot understand the attitude of the Octopus. Therefore they run towards what they think might be helpful in Nod Kern makes a few bad decisions. She wants to find the source of the signals. Kern is wistful of finding an AI as herself. It proves to put the human and Portiid at huge risk. 

It is a very fast read and it compels you to keep reading. The only detail that was not to my liking was the ending (the last 50ish pages).  

***Spoilers coming: The solution seems too convenient. It makes sense in a way but the ending is the weakest part, it feels like a very underwhelming thing after the drama and the promise of violence we have for most of the interaction between the explorers and the Octopuses. There is a lot less fighting than what I expected.***

Overall I enjoyed the series and highly recommend to Sci-Fi readers. 

I am going to leave it here. I have several more things that could be mentioned but not without spoiling very big plot points for the book. So it stops here.

Have a great rest of the day and the start of the week. See you later. 

Stay safe!