A political dissident against the "Mandate," the seemingly fascistic government of Earth is exiled to a planet, Kiln, as prisoner to study the unusual biology and possibly sentient lifeforms. He continues to fight against the Mandate, while learning about the mysterious lifeforms across the planet and building his understanding of what it really means to be a part of a consensus.

I really enjoyed this book! The back half of the book was a quicker and more engaging read for me, but I enjoyed the core concepts around alien intelligence and resistance amidst adversity. I did not find the world building to be super detailed (for example, we never find out much about the Mandate as an entity), but I don't think that was a major drawback since this book is not super long and the plot moves along at a good clip.

I will absolutely be recommending this book. I will recommend it alongside "Semiosis" by Sue Burke, as a book that does a great job exploring what alien intelligence might look like, and how humans might co-evolve with other types of intelligences. I would also recommend this as a good book for folks who are interested in an Adrian Tchaikovsky book but are hesitant to pick up something as long as "Children of Time."

Having a singular narrative voice is all the more compelling in a novel that skirts the boundaries between science fiction and horror: Mark Watney by way of Annihilation. The dry, sardonic voice of Tchaicovsky's scientist-protagonist Arton Daghdev is a smokescreen for the violent, oppressive policies of his autocratic outpost, the ruthlessness of his overseers competing with the unpredictable alien landscape for what will kill him first. This is an unexpectedly political novel, deep-dives into alien biology cut through with revolutionary subcommittee meetings and references to the enduring power of collectivism and community.

This novel will be great for fans of the Scavenger's Reign TV show and Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach series, echoing their assertions of nature (both alien & human) not as inherently hostile to humanity but rather operating on a level of meaning indifferent to arbitrary human taxonomies. For such a dense novel it was incredibly engrossing: Daghdev's jocular tone serves as a friendly guide to deeply complex topics and is a good facilitator for those shy of "hard" science fiction. I lost steam near the end of the story when the narrative structure takes an interesting turn, which while not necessary inappropriate, disrupted the flow of the story for me personally. Nonetheless, a great story for those who enjoy a strong dose of leftist theory alongside their high-stakes planetary exploration novel.

I’m going to be honest - I had trouble maintaining interest in this novel. But I powered through.

This book should be something I loved. Ancient alien ruins? That’s one of my favourite sci-fi tropes of all time. But there is way more focus in this book on Arton and his revolution antics than excavating or investigating the alien ruins. Aside from a few passing mentions, the ruins don’t really come into the story until the 50% mark, and then most of that is bogged down by action scenes that, because I wasn’t very interested in the characters, I didn’t find had a great deal of tension. I found myself zoning out a bit. It’s weird. The book has characters I should have found compelling because I’m quite anti-establishment myself, but I was not particularly drawn to anyone.

That being said, if the characters don’t jive with me but the setting or plot is great, I can still find the story compelling, but those other two aspects weren’t as interesting to me either!

Given the focus on the spider society in Children of Time, I expected some really cool aliens here, but, in truth, the revelation at the end was less than interesting and a bit predictable - I’ve seen variations of this before. True, this version is a bit more precisely outlined in terms of biology and realism, but I wasn’t blown away by it by any means.

I think the problem is that the situation doesn’t really allow for that much exploration. We rarely see the ruins, and the planet is so hostile to human life that the characters are trying to avoid interacting with it rather than studying it. Reading it felt like someone saying to me, “Hey! I knew you were super hungry and you love pizza, so I ordered a lovely pizza for us…” and then the pizza ended up being that abomination: Pineapple. So you end up having to pick around all the offensive bits, but even the good stuff is tainted by that acidic tinge of tropical bleh. This book was like that - I couldn’t enjoy the little bits of the book I found interesting because I had to slog through the rest.

I’ve seen other reviews saying they didn’t like Arton, but I had nothing against him personally; I was more ambivalent about him than anything. While normally, I’d be behind a whole “take down the oppressive regime” plot, nothing excited me about this story. It just fell a bit flat to me on a bunch of levels. I’m not saying Tchaikovsky isn’t a great writer because he is, but something about this novel just didn’t work for me.

Ok, while this story did take place on a planet other than Earth, I would consider this more of a SF/Horror story rather than just a SF one. Professor Arton Daghdev is a Professor on Earth, who got caught up in activities that were against the Mandate (a set of rules enforced by police types) and he soon finds himself on a barge to the planet Kiln, he's put to sleep before the barge leaves and wakes up as the ship breaks apart entering the atmosphere, he finds himself enclosed in a type of bubble and absorbs some of the impact with the ground. From that start, he soon meets the Commandant, who aspires to be a Scientist and sees in Arton a path forward, so he puts him in with the Dig team who are responsible to analyze 'things' that are returned from the Excursion team. These things include some really weird stuff, alien type creatures like nothing he's seen before, but he does his job, prepares his reports and tries to keep his nose clean. But he again gets involved with a group that want to change the way things are which leads him to being moved to the Excursion team, which puts him in direct contact with aliens that are not real keen on any of them being out there. The story is told from Aron's perspective, which for me worked, the author really succeeded in creating a believable world and some of the descriptions of the alien life were scary and a couple were a tad on the funny side. I would recommend if you are a SF fan, though there are some parts that verge on the horror genre. Thanks to #Netgalley and #Tor for the ARC.

Evolution has followed a different strategy on the planet Kiln, principally following a paradigm of life that occurs on Earth only occasionally. Organisms are all mix-and-match symbiotic combinations of shared components; a system capable of adapting to the long-term cycles of Kiln’s climate change. Onto this world, Tchaikovsky has planted a human penal colony of political prisoners, that honors our memories of Heinlein’s Coventry, Silverberg’s Hawksbill Station, and many others. Lest you think, however, that this is a straight-up adventure story, I will now inform you that the descriptive prose and the environmental experience on Kiln is more reminiscent of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

The perspective character, Arton Daghdev, is an ecology professor who has been sentenced to lethal labor with no chance of return, in support of state-sponsored biological/archeological research on Kiln. The authoritarian state known as The Mandate has all the usual trappings of civil and political oppression. Unlike many of the other politically-oriented dissidents, Daghdev has been tried and convicted for his academic dissidence, and seems most sensitive to the imposition of a scientific orthodoxy known as Scientific Philanthropy. It philosophically undergirds The Mandate with its evolutionary determinism, and the leaders of the camp force-fit all data found, brutally enforcing conformity and submission. Daghdev survives the economically minimized one-way trip to Kiln, observing the Acceptable Wastage loss of a few colleagues together with criminal convicts.

The Commandant and the Science leaders of the work camp are not convicts, but failed or at best second-rate students of science, who have exchanged their integrity for a low level of success. Commandant Terolan, insecure in his position, is consumed by the drive to know, but not at the cost of loss of control. Beyond the fascinating ecological world-building, this novel is showing us how authoritarian regimes can co-opt science. As his writing career progresses, I am growing more impressed with the complexity and nuance of Tchaikovsky’s writing.

I have a few craft items to mention. On the negative side, there is a little too much direct-to-reader commentary. I don’t care to be told in detail what I as a reader should expect to happen next, that didn’t happen next. It intrudes on the story-telling. On the positive side, there is an unexpected bifurcation in the order of plot events during the second half. This did work for me, as it throttled the exposition of the primary world-building mystery.

I read an Advance Review Copy of Alien Clay in an ebook format, which I received from Orbit through netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review on social media platforms and on my book review blog. This new title is scheduled for release on 17 September 2024.

4/5 Stars

Alien Clay is the second book by Adrian Tchaikovsky that I’ve had the pleasure of reading, and it certainly didn’t disappoint. I’m once again impressed with his ability to build a world of unmatched uniqueness.

The books premise is intriguing, offering a thought-provoking exploration of humanity’s place in a universe filled with unknowns.

It’s a compelling read that fans of the genre will appreciate. Looking forward to diving into more of Tchaikovsky’s work.

What if our perspective and reality was formed and created to fit a narrative that we are forced to subscribe to? Alien Clay challenges us to question what we believe and who is in control of those beliefs.

Alien Clay follows Dr. Daghdev as he narrates what takes place on the planet Kiln where inmates are shipped from Earth and forced into labor camps. Many of the inmates, including Dr. Daghdev, are the great minds of Earth's society (the teachers, scientists, philosophers; the thinkers). They questioned the strict regime that is governing the people - the Mandate- and found themselves exiled in a one way flight off the planet.

On kiln, the inmates are sectioned into work groups where their ultimate goal is to discover the biology of the species on Kiln as well as where the creators of the Kiln architecture went. Their discoveries counter everything they are taught to believe about biology and life.

The labor camp is oppressive, the Mandate is strictly enforced by the ever looming prison guard, and Kiln's biology is trying to consume the inmates quicker than they can discover how, but the inmates manage to come together to form a revolution.

This is an interesting read and one that will keep you entertained and thinking throughout the whole story. The story is primarily written as a first person narrative perspective of the events taking place and that can, at times, be a bit confusing and difficult to read. However, the narrative is witty and humorous and exactly what is needed to lighten the otherwise grim plot.

This was one of the more original sci-fi books I've read in a while. Gulag Archipelago in space, with truly alien aliens. I especially appreciated that the aliens are not bipedal non-human variants on humans. The planet the story takes place on reminded me a lot of some of Andre Norton's novels set on alien jungle planets, where the native life is not edible, the aliens are not interested in being friends, and no one is coming to rescue the humans who have found themselves in this inhospitable space. Halfway through I was leaning more towards a 4 star rating, because the non-stop hardship and set-backs were so unrelieved as to bog down the story a bit, and the constant reiteration of the hints at explanations of how the alien life works got a bit old after a while that last criticism held even more-so near the end, and got in the way of really exploring our hard-won understanding of the aliens and the planet. I do wish more pages had been devoted to the bit at the end, with the plans for returning to Earth. But, for readers who did not grow up on Norton and Heinlein and Bradbury, the repetition of how the aliens work might not be quite so overdone. I'll have to see what my friends and family think of that aspect when they get to this book. My final rating is a 4.75, which on the Goodreads standard 5-star scale is still a 5, so the issues I had were not too off-putting, and I will be watching for a sequel to this one. Surely we'll get to see what happens with this return to Earth bit, yes?

I had heard good things about Adrian Tchaikovsky’s books before reading Alien Clay, but this was my first experience with his work. I would say this title mostly delivered on the high expectations I had going in. The book features some of the more unique science-fiction worldbuilding I have seen. The world of Kiln feels so authentically strange, so different from anything I have seen in Sci-Fi before. It truly feels alien in all the best ways, from the narrator’s description of the fauna, to the bizarre creatures, and even the color of the sky.

I found the book’s narrative to be consistently engaging and well-paced. Naturally, our protagonist and the rest of the prisoners consistently find themselves at odds with the staff of the prison. The prison commandant is particularly vile, effectively serving as the main antagonist of the story. The interactions between the prison staff and the inmates reminded me considerably of The Shawshank Redemption, particularly in the scenes where we find our protagonist, Arton, confronting the commandant face to face. With this being said, the thing that really kept me going with this book was the mystery at its core. What did happen to the life on Kiln before the arrival of humans? As the story progresses and you learn more about the planet, the mystery only becomes more complex making it feel like you are only getting further from the answer. This mystery remains intriguing however. Our narrator is a scientist who seems all too familiar with this frustrating process of discovery. His perspective (and the often cynical and sarcastic narration) keeps the reader engaged. Without spoiling the entire book, I will say that the ending fits well with what the book was setting up throughout, but I did admittedly find myself feeling a bit let down by the answers we finally arrive at.

Alien Clay is a novel that features fascinating and wholly original worldbuilding, a compelling mystery, and occasionally some well placed humor. I would strongly recommend it to Science Fiction fans.

This is a novel about discovering a surprising alien ecosystem, but not remotely in the way I was expecting. And I didn't expect it to be about revolutions and revolutionaries and about the deforming power of totalitarianism, but that's all in here too. Even the resolution of the mystery of the alien ecosystem has some surprises and cuts against clichés. Yet another good Adrian Tchaikovsky book.

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Challenging, dark, informative, mysterious,
reflective, sad, and tense.

Medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters are a main focus? It's complicated

4.25 Stars

This is a book with grand ideas, and a lofty plot (more cerebral  than action packed). It made me squirm. It has also made me think of "what would I do in their position?" It is a nightmare situation, but then again...the universe is out to kill us. Honestly.

I love Star Trek and the utopian idea of space travel, but I also am a person who's watched Space: 1999, and the first Alien film, and have read Jeff VanderMeer books, and Redshirts by John Scalzi and other more honest and complicated stories that show that compatability is not required, even though it looks like Earth, but maybe we aren't able to adapt to the rest of the universe, even if/when we head on out into the great beyond.

This is a story about exploration. Our crew is on a mission to a new planet, and things don't go the way they thought it would. As was reading this book, especially after going through COVID-19...being cautious and patient in our exploration of the galaxy/universe seems to be the most prudent way of going about it. It may "look" Earth like, but it could be 99.9999999999%, but that .0000000001 could still KILL you or worse...let you live, but forever changed. 

Like I said above, this is a story of exploration, and what could go wrong? There were characters that I hated and was rooting for, but he characters are only service to the plot...and this was what Kiln...the planet was doing, and it's pretty interesting and SCARY as hell.

If this sounds interesting to you, then pick this up. For me, it was a page turner...and I needed to know what was the eventual "end game" and how they were going to "go forward."

If and when you read this book, please reach out to me...for I need to talk to some people about it.

This was an eArc copy that I received from Net Galley for an honest review. I'm very thankful for this review copy and appreciate the author's work on this story and really enjoyed my time in this story.

This is my fourth book that I've read from this author. Previous three were: 
1) Children of Time - 4.25 Stars
2) Children of Ruin - 3 Stars
3) Guns of the Dawn - 4.25 Stars

I chose Alien Clay as my first Adrian Tchaikovsky book, and I'm not sure that was the right choice. While I enjoyed Alien Clay a lot, it was harder sci-fi than I was expecting, and science really isn't my thing. I was fascinated by the concept though, and I think that's what kept me engaged throughout, even though some of the science concepts went (way) over my head. That is very much a "me" problem though, and not a book problem. I absolutely think this would be a great pick for hard sci-fi fans!

All of that said, the worldbuilding was out of this world (see what I did there?) and I loved every minute we spent on Kiln. There's a mystery component surrounding Kiln that I really enjoyed, and although I didn't get to know Arton as well as I would have liked, I really enjoyed exploring this world through his POV. I will definitely being trying another Adrian Tchaikovsky book in the future - probably the Children of Time series.

Thank you to Orbit and to Netgalley for granting me an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

If you're a fan of hard science fiction books, you'll probably like Alien Clay. I enjoyed this book, but there was too much exposition and not enough character descriptions. Also, I felt like this was a second book. I could have used more information about what Earth was like and how the Mandate worked. Otherwise, I thought this was a great novel about the human spirit and connection. There will always be dissidents and people who fight back against unjust regimes.

The planet, Kiln, is honestly my favorite character in the book. Kiln rejects any notion of binary and is a symbiotic planet. The Mandate only believes in and reinforces the ideals of a binary, if you are not 100% a Mandate believer then you are an anarchist who wants the destruction of polite society. When Arton arrives at Kiln and sees intelligent life, he thinks he understands why he was sent to this labor planet. He is a xenobiologist and could be useful for the Science team. He quickly learns the pecking order on Kiln, everything is done at the whim of the harsh Commander. Arton also recognizes some familiar faces, people who were on subcommittees with him and other academic dissidents. Even here on an alien planet, there is resistance. But can rebellion survive a hostile alien planet?

The alien life on Kiln is symbiotic; if you dissect one lifeform, you're likely to find several more inside it. There is a note of horror, and there were portions of this book that gave me the shivers. I liked how Arton would continually try to reframe alien life in a way that resembled what we see on Earth; it made the book feel almost real. The whole book is written almost like a scientific publication from Arton's point of view. A lot of the descriptions are almost like a journal entry, especially when Arton reviews how he knows other characters from Earth that are with him on Kiln.

I don't think I would read the next in the series, but I did enjoy this book. I just thought there could have been a little less science dumping and more fleshing out of the characters.

Thanks to NetGalley and Orbit for the advanced copy; all opinions are my own.

First off, anyone that already likes Adrian Tchaikovsky's works, should stop reading my review, and start reading "Alien Clay". That's fine go ahead!

Secondly, if you have read Tchaikovsky's works, but they didn't quite work for you, then well, this might not be the book for you.

Now I assume everyone left reading this review is really curious about this book. In a nut shell, it is a creative approach to George Orwell's 1984 assuming a similar dark government, but with technology sufficient to send prisoners on one-way trips to labor colonies in other solar systems where they may well encounter very unusual life forms. The book has a decided biological slant, which is quite fascinating as the reader gets pulled deeper and deeper into the plot. The comparison to 1984 might be somewhat unfair, since the society in "Alien Clay" has better technology, and many of the characters have more control over their destiny than those in 1984. However, the astute reader may be appalled at the unexpected horrific surprise ending. Actually, I recommend reading to the end just to learn what I am honor bound not to review as a spoiler.

I thank Adrian Tchaikovsky and Orbit Books for kindly sharing a temporary electronic review copy of this work.

Okay, I loved this book!! Where do I even begin.
This book is a sci-fi fever dream, combining the trials of a harsh life on the prison planet Kiln, with the excitement of discovering new, alien life that will impact humanity forevermore.

The main character, Arton Daghdev, is an intellectual, a professor of bioscience, now captured, disgraced, and imprisoned for being a revolutionary on an Earth that's been indoctrinated by the all encompassing Mandate. No free thinking against doctrine here, or else...

"Or Else," as it turns out, may just be the best thing that's ever happened to Arton. While he now exists as "acceptable wastage" in the Kiln labor camp, he is also giving a stunning opportunity: to help the Mandate Science team unravel the mystery of the planet Kiln, where there are sites upon sites of alien ruins. Who built them? Where did they go? What were they like? Are they...still here..?

Between discovering the truth behind Kiln and fighting for his life, Arton learns that in order to discover the answers he seeks, he has to be willing to give up his most prized possession: himself.

What results is a brutal yet hopeful adventure that will lead everyone on the planet to either existential discoveries that will irrevocably change them or succumb to their worst nightmares. The author effortlessly weaves a tale of scientific discovery with introspective thoughts about what it means to be human and how far one would go to experience a connection so deep that it envelopes an entire planet.

I truly wanted to enjoy this book but I had to DNF at 40%
It was interesting especially at the beginning, the story line was great. But not much happened and it couldn’t hold my attention anymore

Humanity has started to move out into the stars... unfortunately, humanity is under the control of a totalitarian government, one that insists that even science conforms to its view of the world. Those scientists who are too unothodox risk being sent to the same kind of work camps that revolutionaries are. That's what's happened to Professor Arton Daghdev, although he was also a would-be revolutionary, before the revolution he was in succumbed to the usual informers and comrades broken by torture. Still, he is lucky, for if his true role in the revolution was ever discovered, he would have simply been executed. Instead, his skill at biology is considered of use and is shipped to a distant planet called Kiln, where finally some signs of non-human civilization have been found... ancient signs. He's wanted to confirm the Mandate's theories about them, but it's at least the chance to do science, and to study alien life as he's always wanted to do. But there are dangers, and not just from getting involved in revolution again. The alien biosphere isn't quite compatible with humanity, but it keeps trying, and sooner or later, despite rigorous decontamination, it will find its way in.

I got a chance to read an advanced ebook edition of this book from NetGalley. I don't believe it affected my review, but full disclosure regardless.

I am a big fan of the author's series starting in Children of Time, but I worried about not being able to connect to the human characters in it, and whether this might be a weakness. Thankfully, that worry seems to have been put to rest. The humans in this book all seem vivid and real and, if not relatable, at least not relatable in the way that there are certain other types of people I just don't understand in real life, as opposed to feeling odd. Even some of the ones I disliked I felt for, and the narrator was reasonably compelling, especially as the book went on. For those who love the author's investigations into alien ways of thinking and living, there is some of that as well, not as much as his other books but it scratches the itch for me enough.

The plot moved at a brisk pace, always leaving me excited and interested about what was going to happen next, and with an exciting introduction that was good for setting up the society and some of the issues involved. The setup also ingeniously avoid the drip-feeding method of revelations, where an author must struggle with not just giving all the answers away early. Here, the main character's status as a prisoner effectively teases us with his clear desire to find all the answers but tempered by the fact that the pointy-headed bosses want to make him miserable or break his spirit and so may divert him away from a promising line of thought to go dig latrines or stay in solitary confinement for a punishment.

Once we start getting those answers though, the author delightfully inverted some of my expectations in a way that might not be for everybody, but worked well for me.

As it's a science fiction book, for me, when we assess how good a book is, we also consider the worldbuilding. And here, it has two levels, there's the worldbuilding of the human society that has developed, the Mandate, and that of the alien biosphere of Kiln. The Mandate is probably the least novel, in that dystopian societies have been done countless times, but is fleshed out reasonably well and despite that the rules it operates on might not be new, it's chillingly plausible as just an extension of ordinary repression. Still, though I like dystopias, I'm a science fiction reader at heart, and I love getting into the nitty gritty of alien worlds and different ways of being, and it's here where the worldbuilding really shines, starting with a few fairly simple ideas, and all the various looks at the different biology and how it interacts and infests and challenges a lot of our notions even where some aspects of it have existed on our world. I loved the slow introduction and discovery and the payoff of what actually happened may have been a little less ambitious, it well worked for me, particularly with that twist I mentioned.

I still love the Children series more, but this was a solid, quite enjoyable read for me and I'm glad I got the opportunity to, instead of getting around to it in several years like I otherwise might have. By my ratings, I'd put it at in the 3.5-4 star range (which is good as I rarely give out 5s), and might as well round it up.

When the scifi space horror makes my skin crawl, that’s when I know I’m right at home. This is a curl up with your blanket and snacks kind of alien book, where you want to dive right into and live inside the grit and horror

Now this isn’t labeled as far as I know as both sci-fi and horror, however, if I went through things that happen in this book I would need lifelong therapy. So you know, some alien happenings are in store for these characters when you start this book.

As has been my experience with Tchaikovsky, Alien Clay is more plot and alien science driven than character driven. But I will always be a sucker for a good alien-human weird science escapade.

There are a lot of interesting concepts I won't go into because of spoilers, but man I wished I was reading it with a book club so I could chat about all the themes in this book. The ways the planet Kiln is different from Earth and what it would mean to be more like Kiln and less like Earth.

5 stars for me! Adrian Tchaikovsky and Jeff Vandermeer know how to make you uncomfy with alien interactions inside the human brain and body. Spectacular.

For me, this was more of a 3.5/5, but I'll round up to 4. This book is not what one generally expects from science fiction, but certainly leans into the science, or at least biology, aspect of it. I would compare this book most to Vandermeer's Annihilation series; the vibe is very similar, just with the background of a repressive human space empire. Say, 80% Annihilation, with a pinch of anarchist-y leanings from Le Guin's The Dispossessed. I had a mixed experience with this book; some of the time, I was engaged and enjoying the exploration of what biology and government could look like if we opened our minds to unrestricted possibilities, but some of the time, it felt like a slog because the ideas were repetitive and the action was incredibly slow-moving. It's a very cerebral book that would be a perfect fit for a certain type of reader and an interesting, make-you-think read for a wider range of readers.

I can lose myself in any Tchaikovksy story and this story is no different.

Alien Clay is a story told to us by Arton Daghev, an Ecology professor who has fallen from grace after joining the rebel
Arton and others have been sent to the planet Kiln due to their transgressions against the

This was told in first person by a professor of bio ecology. It’s a futuristic tale of life unknown in the galaxy. Convicted prisoners are shipped to the planet, Kiln, one of the only habitable planets that has traces of another species. Daghev finds himself surrounded by others who were involved in planning against the powerful government and not only has to convince the others that he remained true to the cause but now has to decide where he stands. It's completely amazing !
#orbitbooks #alienclay #adriantchaikovsky #kiln