Children of Memory
Dec. 16th, 2022 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearThis is the third in a series by Adrian Tchaikovsky (some of whose books blew me away, others leaving me cold) - I enjoyed the first two so was excited by the prospect of listening to the third. There were good and bad things about it.
Basically, the story is about a combined exploration force (of spiders, octopuses, AI, humans and a hive-mind - all from the previous books) going to a planet to find out what happened to some long-ago colonists. But things start getting confusing very quickly, with apparently multiple timelines that don't match up with what's gone before or after.
I was grateful for some summary exposition about what had happened in the earlier books, but the amount of telling that peppered the whole book eventually got a bit much. It did all come together and get explained by the end, but I was so confused all the way through that my enjoyment was marred a bit. A lot of the story and a lot of the eventual explanation was incredibly depressing, though I did like the very end. I also really liked both main protagonists - Miranda, the hive-mind taking on a sort-of human personality, and Liff, a young girl colonist.
It ended up being extremely clever (a bit too clever, if you ask me - though the over-arching discussion of what constitutes sentience was interesting) and quite emotive - so a good read once I'd reached the end, but a lot of the actual listening experience was just so confusing!
Basically, the story is about a combined exploration force (of spiders, octopuses, AI, humans and a hive-mind - all from the previous books) going to a planet to find out what happened to some long-ago colonists. But things start getting confusing very quickly, with apparently multiple timelines that don't match up with what's gone before or after.
I was grateful for some summary exposition about what had happened in the earlier books, but the amount of telling that peppered the whole book eventually got a bit much. It did all come together and get explained by the end, but I was so confused all the way through that my enjoyment was marred a bit. A lot of the story and a lot of the eventual explanation was incredibly depressing, though I did like the very end. I also really liked both main protagonists - Miranda, the hive-mind taking on a sort-of human personality, and Liff, a young girl colonist.
It ended up being extremely clever (a bit too clever, if you ask me - though the over-arching discussion of what constitutes sentience was interesting) and quite emotive - so a good read once I'd reached the end, but a lot of the actual listening experience was just so confusing!
