Children of Ruin

Generations after the first book, a joint crew of humans and Portiid spiders sails the Voyager toward a faint radio signal that seems to come from the lost Old Empire. The trail ends at a star system holding two worlds that terraformers once tried to reshape. One is Damascus, covered in ocean. The other is Nod, which already had life of its own.

The narrative runs on two timelines. In the past, a terraforming crew learns that the life on Nod is far more advanced than anyone expected. One of its scientists, Disra Senkovi, carries her work to Damascus and decides to uplift a population of octopuses, as Avrana Kern once did with the spiders.

In the present, aboard the Voyager, Helena Holsten Lain and the Portiid scientist Portia are among those who must work out what those choices left behind. Kern's preserved intelligence, now woven into the ship, has a part to play in what follows.

This is hard science fiction in the space opera mode. Its centre is first contact between species that think in very different ways, and the question of how a mind built from something other than a brain might come to understand its neighbours. The book won the 2019 BSFA Award for Best Novel.

It is the second Children of Time book and is followed by Children of Memory.