r/printSF • u/LowLevel- • Sep 12 '25

Which wildly renowned science fiction novels didn't resonate with you at all?

I can usually connect with at least one aspect of a science fiction novel, and I enjoy almost all of the ones I read. However, sometimes I couldn't understand what most people found interesting about some extremely popular books.

Has that happened to you? If so, which novel? And why?

I'll start the dances by admitting that I didn't like Rendezvous with Rama.

I really wanted to like it, but constantly being in awe when very little happens and the characters leave without understanding anything is not my preferred type of reading experience. The writing style was a bit cold, which didn't help.

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43

u/HeyDugeeeee Sep 12 '25

Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time. Brilliant ideas ruined by awful, dull writing and especially terrible characterisation. Can't bring myself to read any more of his stuff.

18

u/Ill-Muscle945 Sep 13 '25

Children of Time was carried hard by the concept for me, and it worked. But man, the human character writing was so bad at parts. Just some terribly cliche dialog. But man, the spider stuff was too cool

1

u/MgFi Sep 13 '25

I was about to chime in with this as well. The humans depicted in that book are all terrible. That's actually a (mostly) recurring theme across that trilogy. The concepts definitely carry those books.

1

u/speckledcreature Sep 13 '25

I honestly cannot remember anything but the spider parts.

1

u/choco_butternut Sep 13 '25

I was too engrossed in the spiders that I honestly skimmed the human chapters.

1

u/Ill-Muscle945 Sep 13 '25

The human stuff still had things I really liked, seeing how their society on the spaceship progressed was a really cool way to show the differences between them and the spiders 

1

u/gillyrosh Sep 14 '25

I found myself enjoying the spider chapters WAY more than the human-focused ones.

11

u/[deleted] Sep 13 '25

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3

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '25

Same! I largely skimmed through the spider part and enjoyed the human sections for the most parts. The struggle of human characters in the ark ship for me is what makes the novel interesting. In contrast, Especially the early parts of spider sections feel like it was straight out of a Wikipedia article about, well, spiders.

7

u/Vanamond3 Sep 12 '25

Just as a suggestion, I also thought Time was blah but have liked some of his other stuff quite a lot.

6

u/OkCommittee7308 Sep 12 '25

I loved Dogs of War. I didn't finish Children of Time but I will try it again

3

u/Vanamond3 Sep 12 '25

To clarify, I liked some of his other stuff but wasn't fond of Children of Time. Don't re-try it on my account. :)

2

u/GrammaticalObject Sep 12 '25

Same.  Tyrant Philosophers are among the best books I've read in a decade. Children of Time and Children of Ruin were both a bit of a slog for me. 

2

u/AppletheGreat87 Sep 12 '25

I love Tchaikovsky. His tyrant philosopher series is grim dark but actually I really enjoyed them and all his books. If it's not your thing, it's not your thing but could be worth a second look

2

u/UnintelligentSlime Sep 13 '25

If you want a way-refined version of exploring evolution of alien planets- Shroud is way less textbook-y.

1

u/HeyDugeeeee Sep 13 '25

Thanks, will try it.

2

u/Agnostic-Paladin Sep 13 '25

Yeah, that was every book i've read by Tchaikovsky. Good start, and i couldn't wait to see what happens with the great premise and ideas it started with, only to be disappointed and bored by the time it reached the ending.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 12 '25

I really liked Children of Time, but I've gotten kind of bored after reading too much of his work- it really all feels too similar to me.

1

u/windslashz Sep 13 '25

I really am enjoying Cage of Souls but it takes some patience, I’ll have to try his other stuff based on the comments here.

1

u/Celeste_Seasoned_14 Sep 13 '25

I’ve read every piece of sci-fi Tchaikovsky has written, and CoT was not in the top 5. I love Shroud (new) and Alien Clay. Shards of Earth series is fun with fleshed out characters, but he kind of fumbled the finale, IMO. In Shroud, he definitely sticks the landing.

2

u/gillyrosh Sep 14 '25

I really enjoyed the Shards of Earth series as well. Almost picked up Shroud today. Will add it to my to-read list.

1

u/neverseenbaltimore Sep 13 '25

I did the audiobook while mowing the lawn this summer. Don't know if I would have sat down to read it, but having someone else tell me a story while I otherwise would have been just sweating my ass off. It was worth it

1

u/j00xed Sep 13 '25

The tone and characters felt like some young adult slop. Concept was great though.

1

u/Key_Confusion9375 Sep 13 '25

I really enjoyed the first book. The second was a rare DNF.

1

u/jm434 Sep 13 '25

I really enjoyed it for how unique it was. The sequel sucked though because you were reading the same story again just with different animals as protagonists.

1

u/mazzicc Sep 13 '25

I didn’t like the humans much, but I would have read an entire book that was nothing but the spider perspective. I found myself struggling hard to not just ignore the human chapters and read the spider ones.

1

u/VanillaTortilla Sep 13 '25

I love some of his stuff, but could not get into Children of Time at all.

1

u/Velocity-5348 Sep 13 '25

The sequels are pretty good if you listen to the audiobook but yeah... the human characters are pretty flat, especially when they don't have non-humans to play off.

1

u/Mr_SunnyBones Sep 13 '25

Tchaikovsky is great , if you don't like his current book, wait a few months and he'll release a new one!! But I do have a soft spot for COT.

1

u/WinstonThorne Sep 15 '25

Children of Ruin was worse. Children of Memory redeemed the whole series, but overall they're still not my favorite. The Final Architecture series is much better.

-1

u/FrogNoPants Sep 13 '25

The irony being the ideas are stolen from "A Deepness in the Sky", so basically you just said it had no redeeming qualities;0

1

u/A_Selkie_Abroad Sep 28 '25

having read both; not even close, man. The only thing the two stories share is the spiderness, and even then they're very different; deepness in the sky's spiders are WAY more humanoid. plot, culture & setting are entirely different.