Tchaikovsky is out of control this year. We have had to divvy up his Q1 releases (Q1, not the full year) in order to try and cover them all. I ended up with the latest entry in the Children of Time series, Children of Strife, and I couldn’t be happier. If you are unfamiliar with the series, they are a loosely connected series of standalone stories about different planets with extraordinary circumstances. Grossly oversimplifying: humanity did itself in, and the only remnants of their legacy are various terraforming projects all around the universe that are trying to jumpstart apes back into a new form of humans. Yet, on each planet/book, something has gone horribly wrong in the project flowchart, and we find ourselves watching the birth of new players on the galactic stage.
Strife is a fascinating puzzle, told in three narrative pieces. Up until now, the principal architect of crafting new intelligences has been the brilliant Dr. Avrana Kern. But, she was not the only terraformer with an iron in the fire. In one corner of this triangle, we peer into the distant past where a cabal of five tech-billionaire assholes has set up a space station on a planet they hid from Kern’s efforts. There, they hope to rebuild humanity in their image to worship them as gods and prove once and for all that they are so much smarter than the rest of humanity that they definitely deserve 99.9% of all resources. In the second, we spend some time just after the fall of Earth and get to see a nice up close look at the legacy of rich asshole billionaires as we watch a crew discover and set out after this lost planet. Finally, in the third present timeline, we join a crew of Kern’s futuristic argonauts who stumble upon the ruins of what happened in the first sections of the book.
For everyone who is just exhausted with the current political climate of watching untouchably rich assholes somehow continue to just get away with everything, this book really hits the mark. It explores the logical conclusion of what is going to happen if the rich just keep eating everything in a selfish gorge, and the good news is that while we all do die, we are at least taking these assholes with us. Strife is the name of the game here, in a number of forms. Tchaikovsky does an extremely interesting job exploring the very idea of conflict and highlighting it through a myriad of angles. There are the obvious ones, like how the pointless, egotistical fighting between those in power for control is an unending nightmare for all the casualties beneath them. The book also explores how progress can be made through conflict and how conflict is often how we grow and change as both individuals and as people.
I really appreciate how Tchaikovsky situates this book to essentially point out that war is the dumbest and most wasteful of all human endeavors, but that a universe that is entirely conflict-free (in all forms) is one that is completely stagnant. It manages to have both interesting ideas about inner turmoil while also never letting the conversation get close to, “and that’s why killing people is sometimes ok,” which was a mild fear of mine going in. The characters, particularly in the deep past and present, are particularly compelling–even among Tchaikovsky’s storied novels. We dig deep into the psyches of these five individuals at the top of humanity’s food chain, and the story manages to paint them as extremely interesting individuals while never muddying the water on their moral standing. It felt like being a psychoanalyst watching patients in an insane asylum and taking down notes on how to help future victims of rampant narcissism.
The present timeframe throws a curveball into the equation with the introduction of perfect misfits. In the overarching narrative of the series, we have reached a post-scarcity kumbaya moment with all the players on the galactic stage. So, when you have solved most of the problems in existence, and everyone is holding hands in perfect tranquility, what do you do with a shipful of various individuals that don’t fit into your idea of a perfect society? Well, you shoot them into space and let them romp around doing some exploration at the weird fringes of what is still undiscovered.
There are a huge number of additional disparate elements that I could talk about (like the writing quality, the character depth, the clever worldbuilding of the planet, the mischievous use of reader expectation, etc.), but I don’t want to spoil any more of this delightful book for anyone who is interested in reading it. Children of Strife is an incredible entry into the Children of Time series, and I have no notes on any areas of improvement. This is an easy early contender for a top book of 2026; don’t miss it.
Rating: Children of Strife – 10/10
-Andrew
An ARC of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The thoughts on this book are my own.
