Children of Time

Loved, loved, loved this book. Best sci-fi I've read in a long time. Maybe it was just the moment for me and on reflection it will seem not so amazing but in the moment of reading it just loved everything.

This book has all the grand themes of sci-fi novels. Ark ships travelling thousands of years to save the last traces of humanity. Terraforming of planets, uplift of species. Uploading your consciousness into a computer. Human drama, inter-species conflict, a little bit of sexytimes. Perfect!

And then the twist that makes it such a smart book; all this stuff goes wrong. The ark ships break down, the destinations aren't simple. The wrong species is uplifted. Minds go crazy when uploaded. It's a pessimistic take on this sort of otherwise optimistic futurism and the resulting chaos makes for a super compelling story.

Finally an overarching theme that holds the book together, the idea that intelligence could take many forms and be different. I haven't read something this good exploring that theme since Fire Upon the Deep. Excellent stuff. All well told with good plot structure and interesting-enough characters. Loved it.