enne📚 reviewed Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky [do not use]
Shroud
4 stars
Shroud is one of those books where I quite enjoyed it, but I wish it had a little bit more depth to it. It's a fun survival adventure on an alien planet story along with some capitalism dystopia on the side.
I was initially quite excited that the main character was not a scientist, and instead a conflict mediator. How refreshing! However, because their role is having to understand and represent everybody's work to the boss, they secretly are actually a hyper competent generalist across all disciplines. Hmm, ok I guess.
I'm not sure I feel about the alternating light and dark chapters. I think it's good to get the perspective of Shroud and to poke fun at how ill-fitting the humans at dealing with threats on the planet. However, having the alien perspective defuses some of the mystery and tension of the first contact elements here.
…
Shroud is one of those books where I quite enjoyed it, but I wish it had a little bit more depth to it. It's a fun survival adventure on an alien planet story along with some capitalism dystopia on the side.
I was initially quite excited that the main character was not a scientist, and instead a conflict mediator. How refreshing! However, because their role is having to understand and represent everybody's work to the boss, they secretly are actually a hyper competent generalist across all disciplines. Hmm, ok I guess.
I'm not sure I feel about the alternating light and dark chapters. I think it's good to get the perspective of Shroud and to poke fun at how ill-fitting the humans at dealing with threats on the planet. However, having the alien perspective defuses some of the mystery and tension of the first contact elements here.
(Funnily enough, Arkady Martine's A Desolation Called Peace has somewhat adjacent aliens and also uses some similar alien point of view interludes. On top of that, they both also end on extremely similar notes. I might have enjoyed Shroud more had I not already read such a similar book before.)
In terms of Adrian Tchaikovsky books, I feel like Alien Clay is a much tighter book thematically. The alien biology there felt very intertwined with the story about a a repressive regime. In Shroud's case, I'm not sure that the capitalism dystopia felt as connected and it left the novel feeling more thin.
