Review: Alien Clay

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With this work, I must admit that I have become a fan of the author and the distinctive, almost surreal style of prose that he uses to tell his stories. Alien Clay continues in that vein, if a touch darker. There is a certain feel to the world-building, supported by hard science details, that makes it all almost believable before it stretches it all into fantasy where it is easier to see how the characters themselves are driving the plot. Here we start with an academic that gets swept up in the political purges on earth and then shuttled out to the prison planet Kiln … with no hope of returning.

The story is then divided into three parts … a sort of introduction section where we get to know all of the players and the brutality of prison existence where the tiny human outpost seems to be under siege by the very nature of the planet … and we get a brief though experiment into the idea of macro-species where instead of specialized body cells we have specialized body parts that can apparently disburse and recombine into new organisms in something like a high speed evolution. Part 2 takes up that last idea and runs with it, giving the reader just a little bit more on the struggle between the planet to subdue its alien (human) parasites and those same human organisms trying to maintenance the own independence. It all builds up to an interesting, if somewhat predictable, and even in some respects dissatisfying, conclusion … which is the only reason this book doesn’t take top marks.

I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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