Children of Ruin

The Book in 1 Sentence

Aliens from Arrival have to fight the alien from The Thing.

Brief Review

These books start off the worst book of all time. Full of confusion, inconsistent voice issues, as well as straight up poor story construction makes it very hard to jump into the book. This is all saved by the end where all the bits make sense, the story makes a wonderful circle that frustratingly makes you look forward to more.

Why I Read this book

I read the first book in 2021/2022 and felt the same way as I did above and didn't even realize there was a sequel late 2022. So with the issues above, I was hesitant to read (listen) it.

In-Depth Review

This is the second book in the "Children of Time Series" and I hate it. It was a solid 50% of the way through the book before I cared about what was going on, let alone understanding what was going on. I have a hard time reading/listening to books so this makes it incredibly frustrating. However, once you get past this crazy hurdle the book gets pretty good.

The story follows the descendants of the previous book (Kern's People) as well as a group of early Humans working to terraform a world. So far so good. However, the terraform team is centuries in the past and their descendants are the Arrival aliens (Not literally, but you'll get the point) and Kern's people is "present day." The book constantly jumps back and forth between the timeline and honestly makes it VERY crazy to keep track.

The characters seem to not change as far as growth from the last book to this one. What I mean is that there are character names that continue from the previous book in a way that they are the same person, but not and because of that, the character grow is minimal and forced.

Minus the issues above, the story ends well with a little bit of predictability. There is a bit of stress at the end which I typically do not feel when reading books. Then it was ruined by the predictable story and a speed through to the finish.

Rating

I am so mad that I am going to say this. As I was listening to the book and I was at the 50% mark, I was hating the book. It was confusing and it was annoying. However, I finished the book, because I can't let things go unfished. Even as I was finishing it, I was enjoying it and told myself "If there is another book, I am not reading it" and yet there is another book and I am going to finish the series. Something about the end of the books keeps me here.

It is a 7, but you shouldn't have to read 50% to get interested so it is a 6.