CBR Bingo: Diaspora (this book features humans (and their creations) that originated (or are descendants of those that originated) on Earth and have been spread into smaller groups throughout the galaxy).
I started Children of Ruin basically the day after I finished Children of Time, partly because I was excited to continue the story, and partly because I refused to forget the plot of first book again and have to do another re-read (this happens to me with series far too often).
In some ways, this is a continuation of Children of Time. Instead of following the same characters as the first book, we instead skip ahead a couple of generations and focus on some of their descendants (I’m being deliberately vague here so as not to spoil the ending of the first book). The inhabitants of Kern’s world have detected a signal in space indicating that there is intelligent life in another solar system and have put together a team of explorers and scientists to investigate and attempt to make contact.
In a distant past, we also follow a team of terraformers (contemporaries of Kern, who released the virus that affected the spiders in the previous book) as they arrive in the same system. Their terraforming plans are upended when they realize life already exists on one of the planets, without having had any previous human contact.
I didn’t like this one quite as much as I did Children of Time, but it was still a really engaging read. There is a bit of the evolutionary development of a virally assisted species, but it wasn’t as interesting as that of the spiders. This one focuses a lot more on first contact between intelligent lifeforms and has some cosmic horror vibes at times that were very unsettling (but in a fun way).
I’m excited to get to the third book in the series, Children of Memory (and I just learned that apparently there is a fourth book coming next year)!