As a writer, I like plots where you don't give everything away, I believe that if you tell people what's going on as you go, you're depriving them of the fun of figuring it out for themselves. The problem with this, of course, is that when you do that with things you write, you find yourself looking for the same in other peoples writing.
Sometimes you find it too easily, sometimes there's lazy storytelling that leads to you looking at the page (or the screen for that matter) and going "It was them that did it..."
Which is really disappointing...
So imagine how cheerful I was at the ending of Children of Time, where I absolutely did not see it coming...
Children of time starts with the end of humanity, as Dr Avrana Kern aboard the Brin 2 (Nice nod to the David Brin Uplift series) oversees the beginnings of humanity seeding the stars with uplifted animals to help them build new colonies when they themselves finally arrive. What humanity hadn't counted on is the lunatic fringe deciding to sacrifice everything so that they could retain their tenuous position in the foodchain. Everything changes in a second and the bright future that we were on the brink of is laid wasted before us.
Eighteen hundred and thirty seven years later, the crew of the Gilgamesh awaken to the realisation that something has gone wrong, and following a signal, head towards the beacon of the Brin 2, only sign that humanity is still out there. On the planet around which the signal orbits, the new race of creatures seeded by the Brin 2 begins it's long journey into evolution, but they aren't monkeys...
They're spiders...
The book proceeds in alternating chapters, one on the Gilgamesh, one on the Planet, and it's difficult to keep a story going in two places unless you're watching 24, invariably one of the perspectives can fade into obsolescence while the other thrives.
Which may have been the idea...
It's apparent that the Gilgamesh isn't equipped for what it now needs to do, originally designed as a carrier of people, it's now a reformatted century ship, and with the chain of command demolished beyond their own locality, civilised creatures revert to territoriality and try to claim what they can for themselves as their way of life starts to fall. While on the planet below, generations rise and fall, and with each one, they learn a little more of themselves, a little more of the world around them, and they begin to rise and above them, teaching them of the world that they came from, is Dr Avrana Kern, who is on no-one's side but her own...
This book is brilliant, it's paced even, neither side gets all the limelight, and seemingly unimportant things become vital at later points. It charts the complexity and need for change in worlds still emergent (which by definition would include the one that we're all stood on), it shows what people can do if they have hope, and equally what they will do if they have no hope.
It's not a fast read, the story is told over generations of both races, but the building of the plot is essential to the end reveal, there are some moments of dramatic genius (Dr Kern's realisation that she's been helping spiders to evolve all along for example) and the end reveal is one of hope, when all along all that had been present was the darkness of two civilisations ending.
Well recommended
