Children of Ruin
Children of Ruin is a 2019 science fiction novel by British author Adrian Tchaikovsky, the second in his Children of Time series. The novel was well received, winning the 2019 BSFA Award for Best Novel.
The book was followed by the third book in the series, Children of Memory, in 2022.
Synopsis
A long time ago, humanity spread out into the stars with the aim of terraforming other worlds for future colonization. In one star system, two habitable planets were found. On one, alien life was discovered, but it was not as primitive as it first appeared. The other planet was covered in ice, and was terraformed into an ocean planet. One of the terraformers introduced genetically modified octopuses to the ocean planet, which developed their own civilization.Thousands of years later, the descendants of humanity and their new arachnid allies follow a mysterious radio signal to a distant star, hoping to find the society of another of mankind's legacies. What they find is a system in chaos as warring factions struggle against the tide of what the terraformers awoke long ago.