ExtraPenguin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
extrapenguin) wrote2024-02-13 08:57 pm
extrapenguin) wrote2024-02-13 08:57 pm
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Children of Memory, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Finally got around to reading this on Saturday. Book 3 of the Children of Time series, sequel to Children of Time and Children of Ruin. Previous books set up the Rus-Califi virus that gave sentience to spiders and octopuses, both on their own terraformed worlds (spiders on Kern's World and octopuses on Damascus), with one book dedicated to each. This book breaks the mold by introducing two new terraformed worlds (Rourke and Imir), introducing a new sentient (the corvids) that has not been created or even touched by the Rus-Califi virus, and having the focus of the book be not on the corvids, but on something introduced in the previous book: the Nod organism.
This means that the book is about aliens! The Nod organism is a genuine, certified alien, and the Imir engine thing is also built by aliens. It's also taken a step from being about singular Portiid spider cognition (CoT) through distributed octopus cognition (CoR) to, like, cognition on a meta level, where we have the corvids, who are if not sentient then at least functional as pairs of macroscopic creatures, and as the main course the Nod parasite doing its best to method act a human it has consensually copied into itself, flanked by Avrana Kern, a human who's been uploaded/transformed into an AI, and an alien simulation engine that may or may not have a purpose beyond simulating what might have been and may or may not have a will of its own.
The structure of the novel turned what might otherwise be straightforward-ish, or a bit repetitive, into a nice mystery-ish thing that I really enjoyed. I wasn't quite sure about the decision to surrect Liff at the end; without that, the book would've been a delicious tragedy (given what happened to Miranda as she approached, the engine seems to have distracted and thus killed the colonists, only to spend the rest of eternity running on loop a simulation of them landing successfully and founding a colony that eventually died), but missed the emotional arc capstone with original Miranda telling Nod!Miranda she did a good job, plus the just offscreen ghost in the Imir machine, which was a very effective place to end the book, IMO.
All in all, I'd say this was not as good as Children of Time, but better than Children of Ruin. (I really did not appreciate the octopuses.) I'm not sure if a fourth book is in the works, but I think one obvious path would be to have either a second of the alien engines or some other structure/relic from them, being encountered by one of the terraforming teams/an uplifted Earth species; later Earth colonists optional.
(P.S. Adrian, if you're reading this? Slime molds would be cool. Please steal.)
This means that the book is about aliens! The Nod organism is a genuine, certified alien, and the Imir engine thing is also built by aliens. It's also taken a step from being about singular Portiid spider cognition (CoT) through distributed octopus cognition (CoR) to, like, cognition on a meta level, where we have the corvids, who are if not sentient then at least functional as pairs of macroscopic creatures, and as the main course the Nod parasite doing its best to method act a human it has consensually copied into itself, flanked by Avrana Kern, a human who's been uploaded/transformed into an AI, and an alien simulation engine that may or may not have a purpose beyond simulating what might have been and may or may not have a will of its own.
The structure of the novel turned what might otherwise be straightforward-ish, or a bit repetitive, into a nice mystery-ish thing that I really enjoyed. I wasn't quite sure about the decision to surrect Liff at the end; without that, the book would've been a delicious tragedy (given what happened to Miranda as she approached, the engine seems to have distracted and thus killed the colonists, only to spend the rest of eternity running on loop a simulation of them landing successfully and founding a colony that eventually died), but missed the emotional arc capstone with original Miranda telling Nod!Miranda she did a good job, plus the just offscreen ghost in the Imir machine, which was a very effective place to end the book, IMO.
All in all, I'd say this was not as good as Children of Time, but better than Children of Ruin. (I really did not appreciate the octopuses.) I'm not sure if a fourth book is in the works, but I think one obvious path would be to have either a second of the alien engines or some other structure/relic from them, being encountered by one of the terraforming teams/an uplifted Earth species; later Earth colonists optional.
(P.S. Adrian, if you're reading this? Slime molds would be cool. Please steal.)