This review contains major spoilers for Children of Time, so if you haven’t read Children of Time and care about spoilers, stop reading here. It is impossible to talk about Children of Ruin, the second book in the series, without giving spoilers for Children of Time. If you have read the first book and are wondering if the second is worth the read or if you don’t care about spoilers, read on. If you don’t fall into either of those camps, stop here…
Okay, still with me? The Portids and Humans have now become a space-faring civilization and wish to go into the universe and see if any other intelligent species exist out in the vast expanses of space. When they encounter another interstellar vessel, they are surprised by the mass of the vehicle and come to the conclusion that it must have a vast amount of water to account for that extra mass and the way it moves. Even more baffling is the way the aliens communicate, with pictures and colors rather than words or tapping as the humans and Portids communicate respectively.
Diplomacy quickly goes off the rails because this isn’t the only planet in the system that contains alien life. The other planet is host to an entity that has traveled to the water planet and tried to consume and convert the native life but finds difficulty because of their unique physiology. Still, the alien life has been a plague to the uplifted earth species of this water planet, and the uplifted species will do anything to prevent the contagion from spreading.
If what you enjoyed about Children of Time is the thought experiment of how a non-simian species would communicate and evolve, you’ll enjoy Children of Ruin. It brings another uplifted, earth-bound species into the mix. The same naming conventions continue from the first book, making it easy to understand the motives of the Portid species. Many of the humans are named after their ancestors which contributes to the generational nature of the series, but this story occurs over a single generation where the humans and portids are concerned, but the new uplifted specie’s story is still told over generations with the story going back and forth of what is currently happening and what happened in the past to give rise to a new uplifted species.