Alien Clay

Meh. This was a fun quick read, so 3 stars and not 2, but it's pretty forgettable.

Tchaikovsky consistently writes interesting alien intelligences. But he keeps experimenting with different narrative moods in his different novels. I appreciate that, but this particular version didn't work for me. The central story is a story about prison labor, about a rebellious group in a prison camp on an alien planet. And the social dynamics of that just didn't engage me at all. It's solidly written, I could follow the story, I just didn't care. It didn't help that it felt like Andor did this kind of story so much better recently.

The alien intelligence part is good but surprisingly thin. The central conceit is fun but pretty simple. And not well explored. I had all sorts of questions about how this ecosystem would work and in other Tchaikovsky novels he'd have explicated it all over the course of a satisfying novel. This time it was just the surface idea.

The most annoying thing is Tchaikovsky's playing with a narrative style where he hints at things but doesn't reveal them until the next chapter. Makes for a page turner but it's a cheap gimmick. Some of it is horror movie stuff: "there's a scary thing and I'm going to keep it scary by not telling you about it". Does not work in sci-fi IMHO. Some of it is that the plot and the characters are more than they seem and I'd rather he just told us rather than trickle it out.

Anyway, still good fun to read. Just not one of his best.