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4.0 AVERAGE
4.0 AVERAGE
adventurous
hopeful
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
adventurous
dark
hopeful
inspiring
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
Even though I could kind of guess where the storyline was going, I was hooked and binge read to see what was going to happen.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
<blockquote>I hear the figures later: twenty per cent Acceptable Wastage. If that sounds like an absurd loss of investment, then you don’t know the history of people shipping other people against their will from place to place.</blockquote>
<i>Alien Clay</i> is set on the outskirts of a dystopian, authoritarian society, where our main character is a radical academic arrested and sent off to an alien planet prison camp to serve out his sentence. At first you think he’s just a bumbling professor swept up in a purge of academia, but over time you discover more and more of who he is and what he’s really up to, and his increasing involvement in the uprising/revolt at this brutal labour camp. He withholds so much context at first that I wound up (delightedly) putting this on my ‘unreliable narrators’ shelf.
The planet they’re on, Kiln, is a rich biodiverse environment full of things that’ll kill you, with horrific invasive spores and plantlife and altered creatures (maybe a little reminiscent of <i>Annihilation</I>). Learning more about how Kiln ticks was one of the things propelling me onwards; this is my favourite kind of ‘first contact’ sci-fi, where the creatures and systems are in fact so alien that we struggle to even understand the presence of sentience in front of us.
I also liked the main characters, the bonding between the inmates on their scrappy expedition, the ways they work together to rebel and ultimately try to fix what’s broken in the rot of their society.
Read for the Hugos, and it’s much much better than Tchaikovsky’s other nominated novel this year. 3.5 stars, waffled on which direction to go but ultimately rounded down; it was a fun, solid read, although it didn’t blow me away.
(Catching up on some much-belated reviews, so this is a little short!)
<i>Alien Clay</i> is set on the outskirts of a dystopian, authoritarian society, where our main character is a radical academic arrested and sent off to an alien planet prison camp to serve out his sentence. At first you think he’s just a bumbling professor swept up in a purge of academia, but over time you discover more and more of who he is and what he’s really up to, and his increasing involvement in the uprising/revolt at this brutal labour camp. He withholds so much context at first that I wound up (delightedly) putting this on my ‘unreliable narrators’ shelf.
The planet they’re on, Kiln, is a rich biodiverse environment full of things that’ll kill you, with horrific invasive spores and plantlife and altered creatures (maybe a little reminiscent of <i>Annihilation</I>). Learning more about how Kiln ticks was one of the things propelling me onwards; this is my favourite kind of ‘first contact’ sci-fi, where the creatures and systems are in fact so alien that we struggle to even understand the presence of sentience in front of us.
I also liked the main characters, the bonding between the inmates on their scrappy expedition, the ways they work together to rebel and ultimately try to fix what’s broken in the rot of their society.
Read for the Hugos, and it’s much much better than Tchaikovsky’s other nominated novel this year. 3.5 stars, waffled on which direction to go but ultimately rounded down; it was a fun, solid read, although it didn’t blow me away.
(Catching up on some much-belated reviews, so this is a little short!)
An interesting concept, but hammered home a thousand times over made this feel somewhat like a self help book, that just repeats the same idea with slightly different words.
The writing style also just wasn't for me. I just didn't care what happened from chapter to chapter.
The writing style also just wasn't for me. I just didn't care what happened from chapter to chapter.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
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
Really fascinating scenario and environment. Best aliens. I found a lot of it pretty grim and hopeless. But the author wound things up super well at the end. One fascinating thing he did was a spoiler itself; when the characters were in a dire situation, he started splitting the chronology from their current "adventure" to when they got back home. I.e., he let us readers know that they did make it, even though he could have built massive suspense with it since it was against all odd. Skilled writer.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore