Paperback, 432 pages

English language

Published Sept. 17, 2024 by Orbit.

ISBN:
978-0-316-57897-4
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OCLC Number:
1455617057
ISFDB ID:
3286979
Goodreads:
202776726

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4 stars (2 reviews)

The planet of Kiln is where the tyrannical Mandate keeps its prison colony, and for inmates, the journey there is always a one-way trip. One such prisoner is Professor Arton Daghdev, xeno-ecologist and political dissident. Soon after arrival, he discovers that Kiln has a secret. Humanity is not the first intelligent life to set foot there.

In the midst of a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem are the ruins of a civilization, but who were the vanished builders and where did they go? If he can survive both the harsh rule of the camp commandant and the alien horrors of the world around him, then Arton has a chance at making a discovery that might just transform not only Kiln, but distant Earth as well.

7 editions

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. …

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4 stars