#portiids

Gonna go on a small rant here.

Adrian Tchaikovsky writes other species/alien species so well. Like, so well. He has ideas that are so out there I would never even think of them, let alone know how to incorporate it. He's just so good at writing something so entirely different from anything people are used to, and I love that. It makes everything in the books 100x better, and much more intriguing.

He also does a great job with the science-y side of it. He manages to fit in all of this random information about cell structures and DNA and technology and how the different species think, and it's seamlessly incorporated with the rest of the story. Nothing gets bogged down by a random bunch of information about how different the cells of the animals on this new planet are, because it fits. He's not just putting it there for "oh hey, it's a sci-fi book, gotta have some science-y mumbo jumbo in there," no, it actually adds to the story. It serves to show just how different, how alien everything is.

my troll ass just kind of felt at home in it? especially after they figured out the ant-symbiosis

like the whole symbiotic web of biotech, the lack of the concept of family (units) or parental care, even some overlap between schoolfeeding/osmosis and the portiid concept of Understandings, it's all oddly comforting and familiar. and of course the use of ants as both drones and apiary systems

like both use eusocial hymenopterans for computation!

i like the spiders, they know what's up

portiids 🤝 trolls

Tldr: Read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, it's very good. Also sentient spiders have five names apparently, and there are personalities associated with said names.

Just read through Children of Time (by Adrian Tchaikovsky), started reading Children of Memory, and promptly realised it was the third book and not the second. So now I'm waiting for Children of Ruin (book 2) to arrive on Amazon. Did I start CoT about three days ago? Yes. But I need more spider content. Gimme the spider-Human interactions.

I love how we get five names for those spiders, and one is only used once, but I still remember it because we get five names and they are: Portia (always our PoV), Bianca (always Portia's friend), Fabian (male), Viola (important side character), and Osric. Osric is mentioned once and it is to tell us that he died.

But like I love how we get around 2000 years worth of spiders and still we have four names in use. Going into the characters (traits associated with names) in more depth: (oh and when I refer to anything relating to gender, the Portiids basically have "reverse sexism: cannibalism edition")

They're always powerful and always smart, the leaders of their society. Fabian is often very outspoken for a male, and he's smart, often a pioneer of technology, which is notable because---again---he's male. Bianca and Portia sometimes switch up, but they swap between scientist and warrior, and are close friends. Fabian is often one of their assistants. Viola is always a high-ranking spider, influential, but a side character. These are basically just their roles and not personalities because those do flip-flop.