1.46k reviews for:

Alien Clay

Adrian Tchaikovsky

4.0 AVERAGE

maddie_can_read's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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I really liked it but i found the writing style a bit challenging. It reminded me a bit of cage of souls mixed

with annihilation

.  I found a lot of the stuff a bit difficult to visualize. 

maneatingclam's review against another edition

4.25

adventurous dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

anicole's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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It was good, I liked hearing about all the aliens.

one_handed's review against another edition

5.0

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A big fun dopey science fiction story. A little bit "Great Escape" mixed in with wildly speculative biological science fiction. Would recommend to anyone that enjoyed the Children of Time series. There are some common themes in this book and the second book of the Children of Time books. This story has more humor and wit as a narrator is a wise-cracking dissident.

spacebornfew's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

amburrito_bruh's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous funny mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

orionmerlin's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Characters — 9.0/10.0
Through a body-first lens, Daghdev reads like the patron saint of limited spoons: an ecologist whose cynicism is just pain management wrapped in wit, navigating a system that treats people as “Acceptable Wastage.” Terolan enacts the orthodoxy of the “normal,” Primatt practices malicious compliance as survival art, Keev is rugged individualism made flesh (and limit), and Ilmus models how confession can be repair when surveillance has rotted trust—

their march confession

is both plot and praxis. These aren’t just characters; they’re embodiments of arguments about who gets believed, who gets discarded, and how a “we” is painstakingly (re)made. 

Atmosphere / Setting — 9.5/10.0
Kiln is a feral sanctuary and a dare: a composite ecology where bodies are plural and species are committees, mirroring queer community and chronic-illness mutual aid—“how much life you can interlock with” becomes a survival metric. The camp’s chainlink and decontam gas sell the carceral lie of purity; the jungles and plankton skies sell messy, gorgeous interdependence. The ruins mystery reframes itself until the only honest answer is

an ecosystem that periodically wakes into a world-mind

—place as thesis, not wallpaper. 

Writing Style — 9.0/10.0
The first-person, scholar-in-hell voice turns theory into nerve endings: field notes, black humor, and clinical detail (“Defiance doesn’t survive rehydration”) let the book interrogate dogma without slipping into lecture. Daghdev’s precise, weary cadence captures the chronically ill’s daily “waking into a body that’s not quite yours,” while the wake/awakening motif sutures ontology to sensation so the metaphysics feel lived-in, not abstract. 

Plot — 8.5/10.0
The arc moves from bodily disorientation (“shut down, dried out, frozen”) to system failure (Clem’s brittle, hierarchical revolt) to a new grammar of action born from connection—

cutting the gantry’s lifelines and weaponizing Kiln itself

. It’s prison-planet to praxis: escape isn’t leaving; it’s unlearning the isolated self. The march exhausts on purpose, so the final turn lands as “of course,” not deus ex goo; it’s the moment a support network becomes strategy. 

Intrigue — 9.0/10.0
Body horror (the “Amazing Deteriorating Man”), bureaucratic horror (“Acceptable Wastage”), and epistemic horror (anthropomorphism-by-committee) braid into a mystery that keeps changing the question. The payoff isn’t a humanoid mask but

a planetary consciousness we help catalyze

; along the way, cases like

Rasmussen’s altered state

flip “madness” into misread transformation. It’s wonder with teeth, and it bites in exactly the right places. 

Logic / Relationships — 9.0/10.0
Systems do what they’re built to do: surveillance manufactures betrayal; symbiosis manufactures trust. Conventional rebellion fails on schedule; the emergent one works because

connection renders betrayal structurally impossible

. The book’s ethics align with disability and queer praxis—care as infrastructure, not charity—and even its silences (could the “we” calcify?) feel like invitations to keep asking better questions rather than holes in the hull. 

Enjoyment — 9.0/10.0
Not “fun,” exactly—more like oxygen after thin air. As someone living in a recalcitrant body, I felt seen by the grind and fed by the vision: survival horror that opens into a fiercely queer, communitarian metaphysic. I closed the book

rattled, moved, and a little less sure where my edges end and the world begins

—which is to say, hopeful in a way I can use tomorrow. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Torture, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Medical trauma, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Ableism, Animal cruelty, Bullying, Cursing, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Excrement, Vomit, Grief, Gaslighting, Abandonment, Alcohol, Colonisation, Classism, Deportation

Minor: Sexual content, Xenophobia, Cannibalism, Sexual harassment

The most prominent content issue throughout the narrative is Body Horror and Mental Illness/Psychosis related to the Xenobiology. The Mandate intentionally uses alien life forms as a method of Torture and Execution, as exemplified by the Amazing Deteriorating Man in the example tank, whose body is consumed by alien life. The central fear of the prisoners, especially those assigned to Excursions, is that the constantly adapting Kilnish life will find the right "molecular key" to infect their brains, leading to an inevitable, raving psychosis (as seen in Ylse Rasmussen). The book features extensive and repetitive Violence as a function of the authoritarian regime, including frequent, detailed accounts of Police Brutality (beating, slamming, truncheon use) and mass casualties from political Execution and failed Insurrection. These violent acts are often described in a clinical or philosophical tone by the narrator, which can amplify the unsettling nature of the constant danger.

bookswan94's review against another edition

4.0

challenging reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

hkg's review against another edition

1.0

challenging dark slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

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This book was such a chore. I loved Children of Time (although I plodded through the second and only enjoyed the third because I accidentally read a spoiler) and the very inventive biology of this book is very reminiscent of that series. Tchaikovsky is brilliant at creating preposterously novel yet evolutionarily logical societies and organisms you’ve never dreamt of before. 

But the self-important narration, positively idiotic foreshadowing, and deeply unfunny sarcasm made this book pretty agonizing to finish. His descriptions were also laboriously created and difficult to picture, which limited my ability to appreciate the complexity of the world he created. 

I will give him a shoutout for having non-binary characters. But none of his characters are believable or interesting enough to merit the investment this book requires. 

I regret the time I spent on this book. I rarely DNF, and ultimately wanted to know how he resolved the mad dystopian prison society he created, so I carried on, but I wouldn’t suggest you read it. Spend your precious time with Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series instead!

czarina_misha's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous challenging hopeful inspiring mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes