Alien Clay

Milla H reviewed Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky (duplicate)

Liittolaisia ja vihollisia

4 stars

Fasistinen Mandaatti lähettää epäsopivia yksilöitä rangaistussiirtokuntiin eksoplaneetoille. Päähenkilö, virallisesta totuudesta hairahtunut professori Arton Daghdev, pömähtää halvan kuljetusaluksen mukana Kiln-planeetan pinnalle. Työleiri on tiukasti eristetty ympäröivästä luonnosta, joka kuhisee vaarallista elämää ja piilottelee muinaisia raunioita. Kumpi voittaa lopulta, Mandaatti vai Kiln?

Kronologisesti kerrottu seikkailu ja mysteeri, joka imaisi mukanaan. Hauskaa kieltä.

enne📚 reviewed Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky (duplicate)

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.

dare

rated it

February 18

Alien Clay

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