A review by blacksphinx
Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky

adventurous challenging hopeful medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

Just from reading the synopses I figured that of the two Tchaikovsky works on the Hugo ballot for Novel, this would be my preferred one and I'm mostly correct. They both have things that chafe at me. I have a bone to pick with the writing on a sentence level. It's the only one of his books I've read so far in first person, and I don't think that's his strong suit. It's written in present tense too, but then we'll set asides from the narrator in the future looking back on that moment and they threw me out of the story. (
Although there is a justification for this very late in the story.
) There's also a part that massively irritated me where a difficult task is set up, and then we get a flash forward showing the result for an entire chapter before going back to the start of the task. I felt it robbed the story of its tension, but I think this was a conscious narrative choice on Tchaikovsky's part.

On the other hand, damn, does anyone write xenofiction like Tchaikovsky does? Kiln is ALIEN in all the best ways. I loved trying to wrap my mind around the way life worked on this alien planet, and stopping to try and visualize all the living organisms that are encountered. He certainly understands how oppressive governments and systems work, and how outbursts against these things tend to fall apart and accomplish little. I liked the ways these two things fed into each other thematically, building layer by layer. The final set of reveals about the history of Kiln was deeply satisfying.

It's funny, a critique I had of City of Last Chances was that it was kind of weird to read a book about many disparate groups brewing revolutionary feelings, but none of the groups were leftist in nature. And I know I shouldn't judge a person's politics by their fictional writings, but after reading this one? I think Tchaikovsky and I could have a big, mostly-politically-aligned gripe session over some beers. (Hell, his protagonist is a stanch atheist and has a moment where he remembers that religious leftists exist and there's no way to completely scrub religion from humanity in a neutral way, and as a religious queer leftist myself I'll gladly buy a round for him over putting that in his book!) Beating back the tide of fascism is hard, as the woeful understatement of the year. I can't help but wonder if he chose to accept the nomination for both novels because in this political moment, he wanted people to read and engage with the different sets of ideas in both books. I take my hat off to that!

It's also kind of funny that
this is the second leftist SFF novel I've read in a year where victory is achieved through some sort of hivemind.
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