Children of Strife
Aliens can be the worst bit of Sci-fi.
The idea of a rich and varied universe, that turns out to be empty is so disappointing. I certainly feel a craving to know what’s out there. Could I click my fingers and wish something into existence, a Wikipedia catalogue of all life in the Milky way, and series of David Attenborough documentaries about them - would be high up the self gratifying part of the list.
I imagine a mix of the strange and familiar, surely there are things like fish, and things like birds, but in silicon base, not carbon. Surely they do things I could never imagine.
And that’s the problem. There’s a limit to what we can imagine for the truly alien, and more often it’s just what’s odd on earth, extrapolated into space.
My favourite thing about the “Children of” series is that it leans into that dilemma hard. We don’t happen to have familiar body plans out in space, the aliens are fundamentally familiar for good reasons.
With that small narrative licence we’re then freed to look at just how truly alien life on the rest of our planet is. With all the diligence and care a lifelong lover of zoology can muster.
The trope worked extremely well for the first two books, set among an epic and cinematic historical sweep that I found breathtaking and gripping. The third book resonated less with me, but only because it felt like a good episode of “prestige TV” where the others felt somehow like “cinema”.
The tension every time a book is released is, how can Tchaikovsky re-present the central trope whilst avoiding repetition, deviation or hesitation. By the third I feared the well was running dry.
Fortunately, book four is a return to form, breaking genuinely new ground - whilst servicing its increasing cast of previous appearances well. Moreover it felt properly cinematic again, a space opera of evolutionary scale.
A great read, I devoured it - I hope he writes more.
After "Children of Strife" I read: Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed
Before "Children of Strife" I read: A Thousand Ships