The Captain's Reviews > Alien Clay

Ahoy there me mateys! This book is plain weird.  I read Tchaikovsky's work because I know it will have interesting ideas to explore and make me think.  This is no exception.

Kiln is a distant planet where there are artifacts of an alien civilization.  Earth, run by a political entity called The Mandate, wants to solve the mystery of who and what the builders are.  However, they want to do this as secretly and cheaply as possible.  So they ship their dissidents and prisoners to the planet on a one-way trip to their prison camp.  Professor Arton Daghdev is one of the prisoners.  Upon arrival he is torn between being a prisoner and excitement about studying alien life up close.  The problem is the lifeforms are toxic to humans.  Will the planet or the prison kill him first?

The highlight of the book was the world building.  Tchaikovsky manages to make the alien lifeforms feel about as far away from Earth life as possible.  He does this through the use of symbiotic relationships in a fascinating way.  I loved reading about the dissections, decontamination procedures, and how the creatures changed human biology.  The excursions to the ruins and Arton's thoughts on the wild life were extremely thought provoking.  Are the aliens intelligent or do they build structures like ants or termites?

While the world building was amazing, I found the plot and pacing to be a  hard sell due to personal preferences.  I wanted to read about the planet's evolution not the humans' revolution.  I did not care about The Mandate or the internal hierarchy of the prisoners.  I found the discussion about the dissent's revolutionary ideas and relationships to be uninteresting.  Also there was a lot of jumping around in time that I would have preferred to be avoided.  As the narrator, Arton could get wearisome due to his inflated sense of self.

The real exploration of the planet did not begin until around the 60% mark.  The first 20% of the book discussing how Arton gets to the planet and his initial impressions was so exciting.  The middle of the book was rough though the mystery of the alien structures kept me wondering.  The aspects of the camp life trying to avoid infection and their viewpoints about their jobs were also fascinating.  There was just such an odd mix to my reading experience.  Anytime the aliens were mentioned I would perk up.  Talk about politics or revolution and I would falter.

But I never thought about not finishing.  This may not have been a five star read for me but does prove that I will read anything by Tchaikovsky.  Arrrr!

I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.