loppear reviewed Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
hilarious prison planet
4 stars
Wry, uplifting, political, dark academia joy on a death-sentence planet.
English language
Published Aug. 6, 2024 by Orbit.
Alien Clay
4 stars
(6 reviews)
On the distant world of Kiln lie the ruins of an alien civilization. It’s the greatest discovery in humanity’s spacefaring history – yet who were its builders and where did they go?
Professor Arton Daghdev had always wanted to study alien life up close. Then his wishes become a reality in the worst way. His political activism sees him exiled from Earth to Kiln’s extrasolar labour camp. There, he’s condemned to work under an alien sky until he dies.
Kiln boasts a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem like nothing seen on Earth. The monstrous alien life interacts in surprising, sometimes shocking ways with the human body, so Arton will risk death on a daily basis. However, the camp’s oppressive regime might just kill him first. If Arton can somehow escape both fates, the world of Kiln holds a wondrous, terrible secret. It will redefine life and intelligence as he knows it, and …
On the distant world of Kiln lie the ruins of an alien civilization. It’s the greatest discovery in humanity’s spacefaring history – yet who were its builders and where did they go?
Professor Arton Daghdev had always wanted to study alien life up close. Then his wishes become a reality in the worst way. His political activism sees him exiled from Earth to Kiln’s extrasolar labour camp. There, he’s condemned to work under an alien sky until he dies.
Kiln boasts a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem like nothing seen on Earth. The monstrous alien life interacts in surprising, sometimes shocking ways with the human body, so Arton will risk death on a daily basis. However, the camp’s oppressive regime might just kill him first. If Arton can somehow escape both fates, the world of Kiln holds a wondrous, terrible secret. It will redefine life and intelligence as he knows it, and might just set him free…
Dr Ms Kat reviewed Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
I hated this book the more of it I read
Content warning Spoilers but I don't recommend you read it anyway
This book could have had some good ideas and turned them into something interesting to read. Instead it mashed together a bunch of concepts, not fully fleshed out, and produced some drivel. It's full of tortured metaphors (even in the title Alien "Clay", except there's nothing special about the soil or earth of this planet - it's the ecology and the lifeforms which are talked about). The first third of the book is brutality (it's a convict prison planet), the second third is horror (OMG the weird way that life happens on this planet - genuinely a bit squickful), and then the last third is a hurried, unearned conclusion where humans start to coexist with the life on the planet. It's written in an engaging manner so I can imagine people would be drawn in by it, but the more I read, the more I grew to hate it. I don't know how this got nominated for a Hugo and I'm annoyed that this author has two nominations and I have to read another book by him. Don't read this book.
Tamsin reviewed Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Review of 'Alien Clay' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
I think I find a jocular first person narrative really irritating. I wish Adrian Tchaikovsky would write fewer books but make them all as good as children of time (not the sequels).
enne📚 reviewed Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Alien Clay
5 stars
This is now my favorite Adrian Tchaikovsky book. The writing is grippy, the narrator is wry, and I love the way the plotlines of revolution against authoritarianism and academic exploration of alien biology intertwine with each other.
Some extremely minor asides that I appreciated:
The narrator is quite funny and I appreciate the way he sometimes deceives the reader; there are several scenes where you get the surface level view of the scene and then find out shortly afterwards that he's also doing something furtive simultaneously.
I love that the authoritarianism is all about black and white binaries, and the book casually infers that one of the characters fell into political disfavor because they are some flavor of non-binary (without using that word, thank goodness).
This is also somehow the second academic adjacent alien book that I've read recently, with James SA Corey's The Mercy of Gods being the other. …
This is now my favorite Adrian Tchaikovsky book. The writing is grippy, the narrator is wry, and I love the way the plotlines of revolution against authoritarianism and academic exploration of alien biology intertwine with each other.
Some extremely minor asides that I appreciated:
The narrator is quite funny and I appreciate the way he sometimes deceives the reader; there are several scenes where you get the surface level view of the scene and then find out shortly afterwards that he's also doing something furtive simultaneously.
I love that the authoritarianism is all about black and white binaries, and the book casually infers that one of the characters fell into political disfavor because they are some flavor of non-binary (without using that word, thank goodness).
This is also somehow the second academic adjacent alien book that I've read recently, with James SA Corey's The Mercy of Gods being the other. The power dynamic contexts are different enough that they end up taking different collaborator vs revolutionary approaches.
Tilde Lowengrimm reviewed Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Increible fanfiction for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
A deeply interconnected multi-level story diving into structure, communication, and organization from the deep level of biology & chemistry through community and up into society.
You're never going to believe this, but Adrian Tchaikovsky of all people has written a novel about the biology of non-human consciousness & awareness and the implications of that structure for the social structures and creations of such an alien consciousness. This particular novel also engages a little with 20th century authoritarianiam and where that movement might go in the future. That political dimension is connected back as a metaphor for the biology, human connection, & consciousness.
A neat, tight, well-executed novel. Great stuff; lots to consider. Not quite as thought-provoking as Watts' Firefall books which engage with the same material in greater depth. Probably not going to be a perpetual reread for me, but a deeply satisfying read nonetheless.
Tak! reviewed Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Alien Clay
5 stars
Another great Tchaikovsky take on the truly alien, this time with added revolutionary fervor. If you like near-to-mid-future scifi rooted in existing social issues and aliens that aren't just humans with weird foreheads, Alien Clay is for you!