Children of Time

This is, quite simply, one of the best books I have read in years. I didn't think it was going to be, not at first - but then it wound me itno its web, and I was hooked. Trapped. Ensared.

And I REALLY didn't want it to end.

What Tchaikovsky does so well is to get you inside the heads of what really are very alien intelligences, and to repeat this as they evolve under the direction of the crazed, near-immortal orbital mother figure, who is making the best of what she has after the wrong species ends up the apex intelligence on a last hope colony planet.

It's clever. It's inventive. And if you don't like spiders by the end of it, you have no soul.

Oh, and it's the first of two!!