They thought they'd found refuge. But this paradise became their prison.
Centuries ago, a maverick terraforming team played God with a distant planet. Out of their vanity and spite, something terrible and unexpected arose.
Generations later, tormented scientist Alis is among the crew of the research vessel that rediscovers this lost outpost. But Alis wakes from nightmares of her own making to an all-too-real catastrophe on board. The rest of the crew has vanished - leaving only Cato, the belligerent mantis-shrimp captain, and Kern, the ship's AI.
Searching for their lost fellows, Alis and Cato must venture into the darkness of the planet below. What did those ancient terraformers unleash? And will their last surviving crewmate become a greater threat than the world itself?
The journey that began with Children of Time reaches a new, terrifying frontier in Children of Strife, from the award-winning master of sci-fi Adrian Tchaikovsky, featuring epic adventure, first contact and the nature of intelligence among the stars.
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Praise for the series:
'Children of Time has a fabulous sense of scale that only someone as talented as Adrian Tchaikovsky can pull off . . . Very much recommended'
- Peter F. Hamilton
'Brilliant science fiction and far-out world building'
- James McAvoy
'A joy from start to finish. Entertaining, smart, surprising and unexpectedly human'
- Patrick Ness
'An exemplar of classic widescreen science fiction'
- New Scientist
Children of Strife was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 30/03/2026.
Autorentext
Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, has practised law and now writes full time. He's also studied stage-fighting, perpetrated amateur dramatics and has a keen interest in entomology and table-top games. Adrian is the author of the critically acclaimed Shadows of the Apt series, the Echoes of the Fall series and other novels, novellas and short stories. Children of Time won the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award, and Children of Ruin and Shards of Earth both won the British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel. The Tiger and the Wolf won the British Fantasy Award for Best Fantasy Novel. Adrian's Final Architecture series was shortlisted for a Hugo Award for Best Series, and his novels Alien Clay and Service Model have both been shortlisted for the Hugo's Best Novel category.