I hadn't read a good science fiction book in a long while. Hadn't ready any book at all for that matter since...last year perhaps when I read Lord of Light. That book: great start great premise, poor execution and a bad ending. It was great for when it was published, more than fifty years ago, but doesn't stand the test of time. Anyway, the book in question: children of time.
It was good. Lots of concepts I'd half-thought of, considered, discussed when high etcetera saw properly fleshed-out and expanded. Other reviewers have commented the characters were mediocre...I found the (sort-of spoilers) spider characters gripping, pardon the pun. There was a certain discontinuity with the human characters...they felt like pieces of a collage. Which is fair because it may have been intentional, to show the temporal discontinuity they were going through.
The science was solid A+ for hard scifi, the writer spent serious time on researching the subjects of the experiments apparently, the approach towards consciousness and the nature of interstellar travel felt reasonable given there's so much we don't know. The plotting was really good, it kept me gripped. I couldn't put the book down, finished it in one sitting a long long one.
I'd recommend it for folks who're not into sci-fi at all too, just for the taste of it. I have a few 'big picture' complaints that I'm going to summarize in a different post.
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