Synopsis:
Thousands of years ago, Earth’s terraforming program took to the stars. On the world they called Nod, scientists discovered alien life—but it was their mission to overwrite it with the memory of Earth. Then humanity’s great empire fell, and the program’s decisions were lost to time.
Aeons later, humanity and its new spider allies detected fragmentary radio signals between the stars. They dispatched an exploration vessel, hoping to find cousins from old Earth.
But those ancient terraformers woke something on Nod better left undisturbed.
Review:
Building on the foundations of Children of Time, this second book took those same concepts and went even further. I really enjoy the author’s focus on biology and the communication barriers than can arise between vastly different species, this time with sentient octopus and a wholly alien species that might be described as some kind of slime mold or mobile bacteria, though neither description really fits (it’s the best I can do as an Earth-bound book reviewer.)
When the humans and portiids reach the star system of Nod after detecting radio signals originating there, they encounter other star ships that are initially confrontational. Two of their crew leave to meet with the ships’ denizens, seeking a peaceful first-contact situation, but (of course) things don’t go as planned. Those ships are crewed by sentient octopus, uplifted by the same nanovirus featured in the first book that also uplifted the portiids, although the octopus’ original creator went about the process in a very different fashion than Avrana Kern.
Kern is the only character still around after the first book. She’s still acting as the humans’ and portiids’ primary AI (and she’s just as condescending as always…although I think part of her redeemed herself a bit in this book.) The rest of the cast is new, though the portiids are still using the same handful of names for themselves. There’s another Portia, Viola, and Fabian, along with the humans Helena and Meshner. Meshner was probably my favorite, and he certainly had the most interesting story arc of the bunch, particularly at the end.
I liked this book a lot, but I don’t think it was on the same level as the first one (I’m still planning to read the third book though. I love the biological aspects of this series too much not to.)
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