Wizardness

I decided to pick up Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky because I’ve been on something of a kick reading his books. I first read the Children of Time series. Then I moved onto the Final Architecture. I stumbled upon his Philosophy and Tyrants series. In total I have loved every single one of his books. I think he’s done a great job really creating unique “aliens” and real aliens. If you know you know. If you don’t, I strongly suggest picking up Children of Time, the whole trilogy is fascinating.

Aside from creating robust aliens, he has always created interesting alien worlds that humans stumble upon. In some they are very earth like, in others they are purely oceans. And Alien Clay, the world is saturated with a complexity of life beyond anything here on earth.

You could say, Tchaikovsky looked at our gut biome, symbiotic relationships, and parasitic relationships and thought, “But what if more?” In a great line in the book, he describes the symbiosis as a story of a Christian fighting the lions in the pit of Rome. But instead of a fight, the man willingly gives up his legs to feed the lions and they carefully put him on their back to carry him about.

Except, once his legs are gone, he’s literally interconnected with the lions. They share nutrients. They become one macro organism. That’s the level of symbiosis on this world. This isn’t so much a spoiler, since you learn that almost immediately from the outset of the book.

In fact, as the reader and the narrator of the story discovers the world together, there’s a huge amount of fear around the natural world. The planet, Kiln, is out to kill humans.

Unfortunately for the humans on Kiln, it’s a prison colony and they were sent there to die. So the Mandate (global and solar empire) treats Kiln and a few other planets, like the British used to treat Australia. Ship all the bad folks there and then let the harshness of the environment take care of the rest.

Like many of Tchaikovsky’s books there is a strong reverence for ecology and biology. In the Children of Time the planets events take place on are as much of a character as any of the actual characters. This is doubly so with Kiln. Tchaikovsky describes unique plants and animals in such detail that you feel like you’re on this other planet. You feel for the characters, because the animals are so alien, but so similar to something on Earth, it increases the terror. It’s the same but wrong.

A creature with Arton, the main character, for most of the book is called Elephant’s Dad, because it bears such a strong resemblance to an Elephant that it’s the only thing he can think to call it.

I think this book strongly falls into the category of Eco SciFi books, similar to Annihilation. The battle of humans against the environment is the primary focus of the story. Like Annihilation, the environment is unknowable and unfathomable.

I highly recommend this book for someone looking for a standalone scifi book with serious imagination, great character development, and a strong environmental stance. If you enjoy this book, I recommend checking out his other works.