Shroud

Fiction

Aug 9

About the book

Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Publisher: Tor

More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.

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Bookshop.org (print or ebook) | Libro.fm (audio)

My review

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s sweet spot genre — aka hard sci-fi about aliens, aka this book — is not my favorite; I don’t gravitate there (heh) and I don’t tend to love the books I do read. But people love Tchaikovsky and keep nominating him for the Hugo Award, so I keep encountering him as I read my way through the prize list. Shroud was still not exactly my cup of tea but I do think it has been my favorite of his so far! The man really knows how to tell a story, I’ll give him that.

In Shroud, there’s a space station of people who are parked outside a distant moon with an atmosphere so thick that there’s no light on the surface. The goal is to study it and figure out what resources can be extracted from it to help humanity continue to survive, as Earth is no good anymore. Then two of the crew members find themselves stranded on its surface, and they must find a way to contact their fellows for rescue while navigating the moon’s foreign, hostile terrain — and what might be the most fascinating, creative alien species I’ve ever read about.

Like I said, Tchaikovsky is beloved for a reason. He is especially good at fast-paced plots with high stakes, and he’s one of the best of the best when it comes to sharply critiquing both colonialism and capitalism (because oh, how often they are two sides of the same coin). This book is no exception; even though I wasn’t fully drawn in by the genre, I was invested in the plot, and I inhaled the book. It also helped that the audiobook was excellently produced! It kept me engaged and also allowed me to let the more alieny and sciency parts flow by me instead of dragging me down.

TLDR, I was afraid this would feel like a slog because of my mismatch with its genre, but I was pleasantly surprised! And if you DO enjoy hard sci-fi featuring aliens, I think you will love this one.