Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Children of Time is one of my favorite books, having renewed my love of science fiction when I read it a few years ago. I really enjoyed the follow-up Children of Ruin, but was much more lukewarm on Children of Memory. This new book in the series was an amazing follow-up to Memory, in much the same way that Ender’s Game walked so Speaker for the Dead could run.

After being a background detail in the first book, we finally get to learn about the Stomatopod civilization, including the new character Cato. Cato is wonderful and absolutely steals the show here. Tchaikovsky is an absolute master at alien perspectives, and the mantis shrimp POV is an absolute delight here. Having the Stomatopods in a similar role as the TNG Klingons for the Pangalactic Civilization was an inspired choice, and I loved the way Cato’s instinct towards violence was explored in relation to the rest of the culture he found himself in.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is great at slowly revealing information to the reader asynchronously as he jumps through three different era of time in the story. There were several times when I thought I knew what was going on, only to be blindsided by another reveal that recontextualized everything up to that point.

While nothing can every quite compare to the first book in the series, Children of Strife is a great book and a very worthy entry to the series. I really enjoyed my time reading this one.

Thanks to Orbit for the advance copy via Netgalley in exchange for my thoughts.

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Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky