Children of Time - Books 1 to 4 - Adrian Tchaikovsky

Written by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Read by Mel Hudson
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 128 Kbps
Unabridged

Children of Time - Children of Ruin - Children of Memory - Children of Strife

All four of the ‘Children of Time’ books sourced from the new 44.1kHz USAC codec.

I have removed the music which tried to drown out the first and last few lines of books one and two. Book one has also been bass boosted as the audio had been high-pass filtered to death. It was wearying to listen to.

Books two and four have both been de-essed as I found the sibilance was occasionally piercing. Only book three sounded the way it should (imho) so hasn’t been changed.

Reencoded with titled chapters as mono VBR AAC M4B - Target bitrate 128kbps, actual bitrates came in lower because mono.

2015 - Children of Time

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life.

But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind’s worst nightmare.

Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?

2019 - Children of Ruin

A scout ship discovers a human outpost lying derelict in space – and a planet better left unexplored.

Thousands of years ago, Earth’s terraforming program took to the stars. On the world they called Nod, scientists discovered alien life – but it was their mission to overwrite it with the memory of Earth. Then humanity’s great empire fell, and the program’s decisions were lost to time. Aeons later, humanity and its new spider allies detected fragmentary radio signals between the stars. They dispatched an exploration vessel, hoping to find cousins from old Earth.

But those ancient terraformers awoke something on Nod. Something better left undisturbed. And it has been waiting for them.

2023 - Children of Memory

They dreamed of a new home. They woke to a nightmare.

On Imir, Captain Holt founded a hopeful new colony on an empty world. But generations later, his descendants are struggling to survive. As harvests worsen and equipment fails, strangers appear in a town where everyone knows their neighbour. Now the community fears that it’s being observed – that they’re not alone. And they’d be right.

Explorers from the stars have come in secret, to help. Confident of their superior technology, they begin to study their long-lost cousins from Earth. Yet the visitors aren’t the only watchers. When the starfarers discover the scale of their mistake, it will be far too late to escape.

2026 - Children of Strife

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?