A new space-opera for fans of gritty scifi. Tomlinson. Knows how to bring everything together to create the right ingredients for a wonderful story. Exciting, intriguing, and an ending that fits very well. Looking forward to reading more of his novels in the future!

This series, 'Children of a Dead Earth,' by Patrick S. Tomlinson, continues to surprise and impress me. Each book manages to be different, each surprises me, and together they tell a continuing story.

It is now eighteen years after humans, who have traveled in the 'ark' from Earth, have settled on Gaia. Humans and the indigenous life forms on the planet have come to better understand and respect one another and to live and work alongside each other. They've even created a pronoun for the multi-sexual indigenous life. It seems to be going well. Until... a terrorist attack on the outskirts of town rock the community. At the same time, a routine flyby of Gaia's moon uncovers a previously hidden, underground alien building. This building is too complex for Gaia's population to have built and human's are still too new in this system to have constructed something this old. Which means...?

As for the terrorist attack, it appears that humans have brought with them the idea of a caste system. Many Gaians are sent to live in a ghetto-like community, where natural resources such as water and the ability to grow and harvest food are in scarce supply, so that humans can live in the wealthier areas of the community. And now some of those Gaians are fighting back.

While we have these two different story-lines going on, we're also seeing the effects of a generation gap. Many of our prime characters are young adults who've grown up with the Gaians as their close friends and allies and are willing to fight alongside them against their own families.

There is so much going on here, and yet Tomlinson moves the story along at a very quick pace. We don't really get to know any of the characters - you probably need to have read the first two books to get a feel for who these people are and why they are doing the things that they do. But for those of us who have already been in this world, this all feels like a very natural progression.

Be warned - the ending is a cliff-hanger. I've written before that I don't care for books that don't have an ending, but this is different. This is a complete story that gives a huge tease to the future of the series.

As much as I've clearly enjoyed this book, it doesn't quite live up to the previous two in the series. It does feel like a natural progression, and perhaps a good bridge (given what appears to be in store), but it's not the strongest book in the series. Read the other two and you will want to read this one, but don't pick this one up if you are not familiar with the series.

Looking for a good book? Children of the Divide is another well-written story in the Children of a Dead Earth series by Patrick S. Tomlinson, but you'll definitely want to be familiar with the series before going into this.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

"Children of the Divide" eBook was published in 2017 and was written by Patrick S. Tomlinson (http://www.patrickstomlinson.com/). Mr. Tomlinson has published four novels. This is the third novel in his "Children of a Dead Earth" series.

I categorize this novel as ‘R’ because it contains scenes of Violence and Mature Language. The story is set in the future. Humanity has fled Earth aboard a generational starship, the Ark. They have arrived at their destination, Gaia, and have begun colonization. The primary character is Bryan Benson.

Benson was police chief on the Ark during the final few years of their journey. Now, on Gaia, he has officially given up law enforcement and is focusing on recreation programs in general and football in particular. Because of his actions that saved the Ark (detailed in earlier books in this series), he is reluctantly a national hero.

During a celebration, there is a terrorist attack and Benson's adopted daughter is kidnapped. At about the same time, an undiscovered cavern on one of Gaia's moons is encountered. Inside the remains of a non-native, advanced civilization is discovered. This stirs fear that Gaia and it's new Earth inhabitants have been discovered by the race that destroyed Earth.

Quickly Benson begins to actively investigate the terrorist bombing and the kidnapping of his adopted child. Far more unrest is discovered among the natives of Gaia as well as within a small portion of the humans now living on Gaia than was understood.

How to react to the alien post of Gaia's moon is hotly being debated with some wanting to nuke it while others want to investigate it further. Benson pursues one clue after another in pursuit of his kidnapped child.

I really enjoyed the 12 hours I spent reading this science fiction novel. I have read and enjoyed both of the prequels in this series. I like the characters developed for the series. The native race to Gaia and their odd sexuality (neither male or female in our sense) adds to the uniqueness of the plot. The cover art is OK. I give this novel a 4.5 (rounded up to a 5) out of 5.

Further book reviews I have written can be accessed at https://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/.

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

Loved the first two could have snoozed through this one. Eighteen years have passed since characters arrived at their new home. Children have grown up, are rebellious teenagers and have some different ideas and feeling from their parents. This has bombs, kidnapping and acts that could be seen as treason but I just did not care about the action. What I did like was the discovery even though it was an old much used trope. This is book three in the series but the ending lead me to believe that there will be more in the future. Even though I was disappointed by book three I still recommend the series based on how much I liked the first two books.

I received a free copy of the book in return for an honest review.

Children of the Divide is an excellent finish to the trilogy. It gives us all the mystery and action that we've come to expect from the series, and introduces some really fantastic new characters.

This book not only lets us meet the next generation of humans and aliens, but also allows us to see the complex and difficult growth of the human and alien societies as they learn to live with each other. Sure, a lot of things go well, but there are a lot of problems, too.

Children of the Divide is smart sci-fi wrapped up in a comfortable layer of explosions and action. Definitely worth a read.

Patrick S. Tomlinson’s Children of the Divide is the third in his “Children of a Dead Earth” series. The first gave us a murder mystery on a generation ship. The second dealt with the crises and opportunities of first contact and the pitfalls of colonisation as an ethos.

This book takes pointers from both of its predecessors, like their snappy prose and desire to explore complex, contentious issues in a sci fi setting, and runs with them. There’s a lot going on here – from mining helium three, to kidnappings, local acts of violence backdropped against a larger, fearsome context. But to me, the thing that jumps out about this is this; it’s about consequences. Specifically, both for the characters and the world, it’s able to approach how decisions made decades ago are rippling into society today, and explore the results of those decisions – which are by no means all positive.

This is a world where humanity is starting again, its technology streaming down from orbit to spin up a fairy tale colonial city. There are those who remain orbit, keeping their eyes on the heavens, and those beneath, slowly expanding the settlement below. But there’s also the indigenous sentients, divided in cultural conflicts of their own. Some are happy to take the new arrival’s science, their miracle cures and agricultural tips, and otherwise let life carry on as it always has. Some stream into the city of humanity, building their own homes, their own lives, and their own dreams – becoming something new, escaping the social constraints of time immemorial. Some, of course, would rather do neither, and see humanity driven from their shores entirely. All of these are choices, and they come out of those made in earlier books.

But humanity are hardly the white knights of fiction here; their interactions with the indigenes seem, at best, like benign neglect. There’s a Native quarter, with echoes of the ghetto about it. There’s not enough law enforcement officers from the indigene population. The quarter is poorly supplied with electricity or running water, and there’s a simmering tension under the surface of inter-species interactions. These are big issues, but they also come out of those earlier decisions – where humans and indigenes decided on a non-confrontational relationship – and the unintended consequences, where a power dynamic has been left unexplored and unchallenged. It’s not the worst excesses of historical colonialism, but the parallels are there beneath the surface – the worst impulses of humanity and indigene loitering under their skins.

At the same time, there are some great symbols of the best of both species. Our long time hero, Benson, is now older, slower, more thoughtful. His adopted child, one of the indigenes, is coming of age – feisty, fearless, and ready to shape the world. Zer friends are, as well – sons, daughters and other-gendered entities, all stepping from the shadows of their parents. This is a new generation of protagonists, breaking away from the older traditions of their parents. Quite what they want to shape the world into – be it a multicultural society of tolerance, or something else entirely – well, that’s rather up in the air. It’s fantastic to see this sort of inter-generational handover though, and it’s very plausibly done. The teenagers, of any species, are about as insufferable and idealistic as one might expect; but they’re also a driving force for change, their white hot righteousness making them a pleasure to read, and their complex, conflicted relationships we’ve spent two books investing in giving them a depth and context that only deepens that experience.

It isn’t all ideology and family drama either. For those of you that like your sci-fi with some explosions, I can safely say you will not be disappointed. There’s more than a bit of peril, and if there are moments of violent triumph, or jaw-dropping destruction, the story wants us to know about the consequences of that violence too. The broader issues are blended perfectly into some fast-paced action. There’s betrayals, murders, and, yes, explosions – wrapped around stories about how people treat each other, how things reached the state that they did, intergenerational conflict and, basically, what matters to people.

I’ve always said Tomlinson wrote imaginative, interesting books that more people should read. I’ll say it again now. This is intelligent science fiction, with interesting thoughts on the broader human condition, wrapped in an absolutely smashing story. Catch up with the earlier instalments, then give this a read.

This is the newest in the Children of a Dead Earth series and is set about 15 year after the last book but there are new mysteries, action and conspiracies, then added in to this our hero also has to learn to deal with a "teenager" which is a whole other kind of mystery to solve.