This powerful new sci-fi novel follows the events of Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time, winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award.Before the fall of Earth, its voracious terraforming programme had attempted to colonize nearby stars. One team travelled to a planet they would call Nod, to prepare it to receive life. But they made a startling discovery. Nod already had life; the first alien ecosystem ever discovered. Scientists decided to preserve their find, turning to an ice-world further from the sun. They warmed it into an ocean paradise - while investigating Nod and its fauna. Then humanity's great empire dissolved into anarchy, isolating Earth's outposts. Colonizers discovered, too late, that life on Nod transcended the primitive forms they'd discovered. And as they'd been watching Nod, they'd been studied in turn.Now, thousands of years later, the Portiids and their humans have sent an exploration vessel - following fragmentary, desperate radio signals. They discover Nod and a system in crisis. Here, warring factions are attempting to rebuild, following an apocalyptic catastrophe. For those early terraformers woke something all those years before - something better left undisturbed.Children of Ruin is set in the same universe as Adrian Tchaikovsky's extraordinary Children of Time.