The battle with this giant book was real. I started it months ago, then restarted it around New Year and completed over 10 books in between. The third attempt this month finally ended in victory.
Two storylines alternate with slightly different characters each time. One follows a community of intelligent spiders. The other follows the last surviving humans, flying mostly frozen in a thousand-year-old spaceship called Gilgamesh.
It’s no secret they’re heading for a crash. The deus ex machina pulls the strings toward a carefully arranged finale we can see from the orbit.
I liked the spiders. I didn’t like much else. From what I’ve heard, the second part is easier to read.
3/5.
Veselin.blog 
This was originally written as a standalone. so the sequels feel a bit clunky imo…
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I’m less sure about this. I have only read the direct sequel – Children of Ruin though. I really enjoyed it, but it’s definitely the case that if you didn’t enjoy the first you won’t enjoy the second.
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It’s a stated fact by Tchaikovsky himself. Children of Time was written as a standalone but did so well that the publishers pressured him to write a sequel (and then another sequel after that). Now, because he was still a good author at the time, he made sure to leave himself an out. But his statement was that it was originally a standalone. Not going to find that statement anymore though.
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Oh, sorry I was sharing my point of view on the clunkiness. I’m not disputing whether the sequels were originally intended or not, I have no idea about that and don’t see any reason to disbelieve you.
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Sounds like an entertaining book with space escapade theme.
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Like battlestar galactica but humans flying to the only planet with cylons from the entire galaxy.
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