Shejidan / What have you been reading lately?

**Posted by Surtac** 7/16/2025 1:53 am

I've finished Bee Speaker by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's very good imho and I found it a real page-turner. While it's the third book in his Dogs of War sequence, it is not a direct sequel to the action in the earlier books and I think it works well as a place to jump in.

And that's now two very good SF books from Tchaikovsky that I've read in the last year. The other was Saturation Point, which I believe is now headed for the big screen.

**Posted by starexplorer** 7/25/2025 3:48 am

I’ve not yet read one of his books. I have Children of Time in my TBR. Which of his books would you most recommend? Keep in mind I am not a completist; for a first foray into an author, I like to read their best, so as to get a good sense of their work. I may or may not read more. As Ezra Pound said when asked what he thought of Bob Dylan, “There’s so frightfully much to read!”

**Posted by Surtac** 7/25/2025 6:29 pm

Okay. According to my records, I've read the following titles by Adrian Tchaikovsky in the last seven years -

Redemption's Blade
Children of Time
The Expert System's Brother
Dogs of War
Walking to Aldebaran
Precious Little Things
Private Lives of Elder Things
The Expert System's Champion
Bear Head
Children of Ruin
Elder Race
Saturation Point
Bee Speaker

And those are all from the SF side of his output (excepting Redemption's Blade which is fantasy from a shared world setting). Apparently his fantasy work is also well regarded, but fantasy is not something I read much of these days.

Of the titles above, I think Children of Time would be my initial recommendation based on the series award successes (Clarke for Time, BSFA for Ruin and Hugo for series). If you'd prefer something shorter to start with, Saturation Point has a BSFA award for shorter fiction.

And I'm reminded I haven't yet read the third Children of Time book. I need to remedy that.

**Posted by starexplorer** 7/26/2025 1:56 am

Ok that’s great. Thank you - I’m placing CoT in the next position in the SF section of my TBR list. I have been under reading due to circumstances for some time now, I hope that my recent semiretirement will address that problem.

**Posted by Aja Jin** 7/26/2025 1:20 pm

I haven't read anything by Tchaikovsky that knocked my socks off. I was a DNF recently on Children of Time. I could see the potential, but neither the characters or story got me interested (the premise was really good). Elder Race was interesting but minor, with similarities to how the Ekumen conducts contact.

I enjoyed the Final Architecture trilogy, although IIRC it felt uneven at times.

Shroud was, I think, my overall favorite. Alien Clay was also good.

**Posted by starexplorer** 7/26/2025 2:31 pm

Aja Jin wrote:
I haven't read anything by Tchaikovsky that knocked my socks off. I was a DNF recently on Children of Time. I could see the potential, but neither the characters or story got me interested (the premise was really good). Elder Race was interesting but minor, with similarities to how the Ekumen conducts contact.

I enjoyed the Final Architecture trilogy, although IIRC it felt uneven at times.

Shroud was, I think, my overall favorite. Alien Clay was also good.

Hmm, DNF ay? Ok, I’m forewarned. I’m big these days on not finishing if it isn’t doing it for me. Will report back.

**Posted by Surtac** 7/26/2025 4:37 pm

Aja Jin wrote:
I haven't read anything by Tchaikovsky that knocked my socks off. I was a DNF recently on Children of Time. I could see the potential, but neither the characters or story got me interested (the premise was really good). Elder Race was interesting but minor, with similarities to how the Ekumen conducts contact.

I enjoyed the Final Architecture trilogy, although IIRC it felt uneven at times.

Shroud was, I think, my overall favorite. Alien Clay was also good.

Interesting. I liked Children of Time a lot, but I thought Children of Ruin was even better. After compiling the list above, I picked up and started Children of Memory yesterday. I'm about 12% in so far and well and truly hooked.

Alien Clay and Shroud are still in the TBR Pile. I will get to them.

**Posted by Surtac** 7/31/2025 5:54 pm

I finished Children of Memory yesterday, and I'm now firmly of the opinion that that series of books deserved every award they were given.

They manage to be both epic and space-operatic in scale in terms of timeframes and distances while being simultaneously up close and intimately personal at an individual and inner psychological level.

Thematically, the series, Memory in particular, is all about what it means to be human and what being post-human might be or look like. It's also about the nature of intelligence and how it might manifest in different ways and forms. In Children of Time, we have the evolved spiders, in Ruin we have the singular entity from the land (planet) of Nod, and in Memory we have another unique perspective from evolved corvids.

And Miranda is a character I don't think I'll ever be able to forget.

Last edited by Surtac (7/31/2025 7:52 pm)

**Posted by Aja Jin** 7/31/2025 7:16 pm

Hurumph. I’ll need to have anther go. Corvids? I can do it for corvids.

**Posted by starexplorer** 7/31/2025 9:32 pm

This is encouraging!