Shroud

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 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.

I devoured Shroud. This is Adrian Tchaikovsky at his scifi best - truly alien aliens and humans being humans, engrossing drama ensues.

In Shroud, Tchaikovsky imagines evolution on a world where visible light is not available.

As a legally blind person I'm both disappointed and glad that this novel is not about blindness. I would have liked to see Tchaikovsky describe the challenges of dealing with blindness, but wouldn't have liked to see him fail at it, like too many other sighted authors.

This is a first contact story. Quite uniquely, establishing communication isn't the first priority.

It contrasts a human capitalist strip mining project with an alien intelligence that has it's own history, constraints and priorities.

But first of all, it is a trek across a dangerous alien environment and survival against the odds.