I'd like to open this review by disclosing that, while not afraid of spiders, I have a moderate phobia of swarms.

Mild to medium spoilers to follow, getting more-spoily with each sentence. 

Children of Time features a human race that is nearly extinct, lost in space, and looking for a new planet to come home. There is such a planet, artificially designed to promote prosperous earthly conditions. The reasons behind it are absurd (think trying to model an evolutionary speed-run between ape and man), but it is nevertheless coveted territory. But evolutionarily-savvy spiders reside there, and don't know what to make of the arrival of the earthlings.

I really enjoyed the evolution of the spiders; we had hunting spiders building better traps, long distnace communication, a violent matriarchal society, great wars and natural disasters, the development of a spider-religion, and those scenes of first contact that kept me up at night. The book reached a sort of plateau near the middle, and alternating between "here's another chapter of spider evolution" and "here's another chapter of unrest aboard the spaceship" started to feel like a chore. I do commend the book to adhering to it's own within-world rules. 

While it did drag a little bit, I'm glad to have read it and may continue the series. Especially since I hear that there are octopi-like creatures in space, and those don't tend to come in swarms. 3.5 stars rounded down.