I got into Tchaikovsky after reading thought Dennis E. Taylor’s Bobiverse series and while I liked those books, they were always very lacking in creative alien designs. The Pav, Deltans and Quinlans are all pretty much just different flavors of human-like.

Children of Time on the other hand had some truly alien aliens, even though they technically aren’t even aliens. The way the spiders society and industry functions is so different from humans and more interesting for it.

I know the second book of the CoT series isn’t as highly regarded but I love the antagonist and how it works. Fair to say that I have lost all interests of “going on an adventure”