This is the third -- and I believe final -- installment in Adrian Tchaikovsky's acclaimed Children of Time series.

The action once again moves on to another alien world but with many of the same characters and species from the earlier two books. And of course we are introduced to additional new intelligences, as you'd expect from the earlier stories' trajectories.

However it took me well over half the book to really get into it. The multiple plots seemed not only hard to keep track of, but self-contradictory at times as well. Eventually everything does fall into place and there are enough plot twists to keep you intrigued right to the end, but there were definitely times when I had to force myself to keep reading as the frustration was starting to get too much.

I'm glad I kept going, though. In the last third of the book many of the earlier confusion gets resolved, and that's what's bumped it up from a three-star to a four-star review.

It is ultimately a good book in the end, although it's definitely more openly philosophical and introspective than the previous two. If you like Tchaikovsky's work and are prepared to stick with it, this is rewarding.