Children of Memory, Review

The Children of Time series comes to a close with the final book Children of Memory. Adrian Tchaikovsky has created one hell of a trilogy with this. The first book was unique and exceptional. Children of Ruin was great and added some more elements and characters to the mix. Children of Memory goes for something a bit different, and it blew me away!

To fully understand parts of this book, you really need to have read the previous two books, or else some parts will make little sense or just fall flat. Highly recommend you read them if you haven't!

Children of Memory is a different beast from the previous two books. Primarily set on the planet Imir, where a fragile colony has managed to survive after fleeing Earth to establish a new outpost, the inhabitants are living a life where much technological knowledge has been lost.

When strangers appear, they start to realise something is not as it seems in this colony where everyone knows everyone else. These strangers process new technologies lost to the colony, but that doesn't help them much when they start losing track of time and memories. Imir's history is wrong.

The characters you meet pull you in from the get-go. There are some returning characters from the previous books, but some new ones too, which really add some delight and help ground the series in the closing chapter. It's hard to explain things without spoilers truly, and I'd really like to avoid that where possible because it's all mind-blowing. A lot of the time, I don't mind spoilers, but I'd have been pretty damn annoyed if I didn't get to experience the second half of this book knowing anything about what was going on.

Children of Memory is a book of two halves. The first half, you spend your time wondering what is going on, as you get to know the new characters and the Imir colony. The second half, it just wow. The end sequence is incredible - just pure sci-fi madness that brings the whole book together as things start to click into place, chapters in the first half suddenly make a lot of sense, and you're just blown away by what has happened.

This, right here, was quite possibly my favourite instalment of the series. I couldn't stop reading as the end came within sight, and I'm pretty sure I said, "oh damn" a few times out loud.

Rating: 5/5