In Alien Clay, our primary protagonist finds himself exiled to a distant alien planet known as Imno 27G, or 'Kiln' to the locals, after being convicted for his involvement in an uprising against the Earth government. This desolate planet serves as a labour camp where the workforce is tasked with researching the local flora, fauna, and architecture to uncover the origins of the abandoned ruins scattered across Kiln.

Despite the challenging terrain and the abundance of research opportunities, the camp's control begins to wane when a research expedition goes awry, revealing Kiln's hidden dangers. With a diverse cast of characters and meticulous world-building, "Alien Clay" offers a compelling exploration of humanity's drive to explore, understand, and dominate. However, it also highlights how nature, when given the opportunity, will reclaim its territory.

3.5/5.

In Tchaikovsky's increasingly huge canon of work, there are clear subgenres you can explore. Post Children Of Time, one of those is very much speculation on alien intelligence (or the uplift of Earth animal intelligences) and other forms life. Alien Clay is not part of the Children sequence, though I can see how the ideas housed within could fit perfectly within that narrative. Instead he fits this exploration of alien life within a different kind of human dystopia, allowing him to also discuss aspects of human intelligence and politics. Not least the difficulty of doing science within a fascistic framework.

It has a great in media res start where our protagonist Professor Arton Daghdev and political prisoner is being dropped to the alien planet in a pod, discussing a compatriot who burns up on re-entry. It does a good job of discussing the backstory here, and the callous nature of the human government, with acceptable losses on its scientist prisoners. Arton wasn't particularly dissenting, but his theories suggested that humanity might not be the cradle of life, and being connected to the wrong person with the wrong person had him exiled to life on the planet Kiln, where ironically he slowly gets to encounter life. Though not intelligent life as we know it, there are bugs, creepy crawlies, but nothing that appears to be on top of the food chain in an intelligent way, yet there are also ruins, and prisoners going mad.

There is a slow-burn mystery here which takes the nature of evolution and gives it a different spin. What if the entire flora and fauna evolved in symbiosis, as some kind of lego construction kit of life, If you need transport, bolt on the legs, if you need burrowing, grab some paws. And playing this down to a microscopic level, and also macroscopic - intelligence and sentience is just another thing that can be bolted on - and is relatively low down in the pecking order of useful adaptations for the day-to-day life on Kiln. But also how does it then work with humans which don't play so nicely with symbiosis, initially, though they may have something the planet wants (hint, it might be space travel).
All of this slowly takes over the previous narrative which shows how sucking up to a hierarchy is terrible for scientific progress, and that trying to provide illogical political theories rather than letting the science guide you is madness. And a different kind of madness to being stuffed with an alien parasite. A really good done in one and a real return to form.

Wow! Thank you to netgalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review. This is not a genre I generally read and it took me a little while to get on board with the 'sciencey' aspects. That's said, the world building was phenomenal and I could totally see this being made into a film. Lots of drama and action with a satisfying outcome.

It's opened my eyes to this author and this genre!

Professor Arton Daghdev is being shipped off to an alien planet as punishment to a labour campon Kiln. There he is condemned to work in this alien world until he dies. The planet Kiln has the strangest ecosystem which when given a chance will invade the human body and take over. Daghdev has to fight to stop Kiln invading his body as well as the strict regime of the labour camp and its leader. Which will kill him first ? Kiln has a secret will Daghdev be the one to discover what others have failed to find.

I had a great time reading this. A very creepy dark atmosphere. I will be thinking about this book for quite some time. This is a brilliant sci fi quick read and I would highly recommend it.

Thank you to Netgalley, Pan MacMillan and Adrian Tchaikovsky for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Alien Clay takes dissident scientists and prisoners and sends them, one-way, to the planet Kiln. Kiln is an alien planet teeming with an ecosystem of creatures following a different biology and evolutionary mechanism to Earth. Tasked with decoding strange writing on various structures on the surface, the prisoners investigate the planet as it in turn investigates them.

I always enjoy Adrian Tchaikovsky’s writing, and imaginative settings, and love the concept of an ecosystem that can form and reform creatures from collaborative combinations of other organisms. Kiln is described vividly, as is the harsh reality of a prison camp under a brutal Commandant. However, the characters are pretty hard to like, and the book plays out as a pretty lean thought experiment, pivoting on one (albeit brilliant) idea. I wanted to care more about the cast, they seemed, as in the opening sequences, to be a bit throwaway. Worth a read if you like tight, skilful Sci-Fi, and imaginative world building.

This was brilliant in a mind-fuck sort of way.

Tchaikovsky gives us a dystopian Earth where any digression of scientific opinion is enough cause to exile you to a labour camp on an alien planet.

I begin the novel expecting alien archaeology (which I am ALL here for) with an analysis of individuality and ultimately what it means to be human, lined neatly in a revolutionary tale with a sense of ‘stick it to the man.’ But that would be expecting too little from Tchaikovsky.

Alien Clay is instead a look at how differently evolution could play out on an alien planet and how in the end we are all just made up of cellular clay, to be shaped by the world around us. There was enough referential material hidden in the seams of this novel that you could write a thesis paper on it. In my opinion, the cover designer really missed the opportunity to incorporate Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights into the design.

What I think is merely going to be a revolutionary tale on a foreign planet becomes instead a body-horror-tinged slow descent into something else entirely (which I do not want to spoil).

Be prepared for a dense read. I found I had to be clued in at all times as this was not a light afternoon escape, but ended up being well worth the effort of pushing through the alien jungle. I will definitely be adding this to my read and read again pile.

Another day, another Adrian Tchaikovsky book.
This author and I have such a complicated relationship, and this was no different. I feel like is the first time that don’t love nor hate one of his books. It felt down the middle. I honestly don’t have much to say, I listen to it, and it was different from what I was expecting. I thought it would be survival and study in another planet, we the story already started with our main character captured and trying to survive as somewhat of a slave.
Some parts where great like when they are actually out there getting samples and others were pretty boring like all the things in camp.
So I’m pretty lukewarm about this one, I’ll continue reading his books since I’m a masochist but this one felt flat.

Exiled to a distant planet as a political dissident, alien ecologist Arton Daghdev must investigate a series of mysterious artefacts which seem to point to intelligent life. What will he discover and can he do so while navigating the dangers of prison camp life?

This novel comes as the latest in a line of strong works from Adrian Tchaikovsky. Considering the pace at which he puts stuff out, his worlds are always incredibly well-realised with an abundance of intriguing characters and concepts. There is much to engage the mind here, though the story does get a little bogged down with its central ideas which feel like remixes of notions Tchaikovsky has played with elsewhere. Characters are a bit harder to tell apart than usual.

That being said, this is a very well-written work which will send you hurtling into another world of intrigue and excitement. Would recommend!

I finished this book a while ago, but haven't been able to leave a review until now, because I simply didn't know how to put my feelings into words.

This book is, at its very foundations, remarkable.

You can read the blurb, but it doesn't describe the sheer experience of the tale. Yes, it looks at politics, social systems, exploring identity and other worlds. it tells of alien - utterly alien, not even the slightest bit human - life and what that might mean when making contact. The fear of the unknown, the greater differences between other humans than those aliens, the need to find what personal and shared truth, life and unity is...

There's a LOT going on here, but while it may be 'hard' science-fiction, it reads like a beautiful (and often terrifying) dream. Skilfully told, with visuals that allow the reader to smoothly traverse the paths of Kiln with its protagonists, I stayed up very late to see this one through. There was literally no way I could put it down without knowing what would happen, because it is so very unpredictable - and the conclusion is simply glorious.

Yes, there's horror. There's strangeness, violence and all that the Deep Unknown of space can be. But then I thought: why would alien life be as simple and humanoid as, say, Star Trek, when it can be as weird and wonderful as this?

I'm using a lot of enthusiastic words here, but that's because this really is one of those books that you just have to experience for yourself. This is science-fiction in its truest sense: it's about humanity when taken out of traditional structures, thereby discovering what its core truth really is.

I hadn't read any Adrian Tchaikovsky before, and have worked immediately to remedy that. Also he seems prolific, so I'm looking forward to his upcoming titles this year alone!

One of my Books of 2024, easily. A huge recommend.

Professor Arton Daghdev has been shipped out to the distant planet of Kiln, condemned to live and work the rest of his days out at a labour camp as punishment for his political activism and defiance of the Mandate on Earth. Kiln is thriving with a chaotic alien ecosystem, which reacts in horrifying ways with the human body, so every day spent on the planet is rife with danger, not to mention the oppressive regime within the camp. Is this to be the rest of Arton’s life, or can he find a way to escape?

This book contains heavier sci-fi than I would usually go for, but Tchaikovsky is an excellent author with the ability to make the science more accessible and at least somewhat understandable for those of us who have a lesser interest in that kind of thing (me). Most impressive though, is the impeccable world-building. The setting is completely integrated to the plot, so an image of Kiln is painted without feeling at all deliberate or laboured – it feels like it could be an entirely real place.

In amongst the eco-science and general peril of Kiln, is Arton’s witty narrative which I really enjoyed. Arton is an incredibly relatable and mostly likeable character, who speaks directly to the reader and is full of humorous, self-deprecating and insightful thoughts and opinions.

Unfortunately a DNF for me, I just couldn’t get into it. I kept persisting because of other good reviews & I do love a Sci-Fi but my mind kept wandering, the story just wasn’t absorbing enough for me to pay attention to what was going on & I realised after reading 30% of it that I should probably just let it go - not for me, there are plenty of other reviews that say otherwise though!

Adrian Tchaikovsky is always a great read - I have read a small sampling across various types of stories from him and I have had a great time, the whole way through the book no matter the length.

Alien Clay is a short novel, focussing on a main character who has been identified as a political enemy on Earth and as a result he's been shuttled to a work camp on an alien world, The Kiln. The writing is a highlight of the story, a mix of humour observations while also keeping the tone serious and building a clear picture of this science fiction world the main character and the reader are trying to understand. I thought the main character, Professor Arton Daghdev, sprung straight into the meat of the story and build a fully formed sense of himself and his relationships which were established very quickly.

I think every science fiction fan should try Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Alien Clay is a good potential starting point. It's not my favourite of his work as I prefer a longer series, but his quality shines through each page and hooks the reader quickly.

I am grateful to NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. 

‘Alien Clay’ is a new novel by the author Adrian Tchaikovsky. It is a stand-alone novel, so there is no need to have read any of Mr Tchaikovsky’s previous books. Although I do highly recommend you do !

This book is based some time in the future, on a distant prisoner-colony planet, now populated with various dissidents and ‘enemies of the state’ who have been transported from the Earth by a Totalitarian regime, referred to as The Mandate. It is a hostile and dangerous planet with a barely tolerable climate and a sometimes hostile geography. Lifeforms have some molecular similarities with those on Earth , but seems largely incompatible. Symbiotic in their relationships, melded together by some biological mechanism or evolution. “What could possible go wrong ?” the reader may wonder.

There is little reason for The Mandate to explore this planet apart from the indications that intelligent life is present or has been present at some time. The forced-labour population works under the guidance of Mandate employees, mostly security staff but also technical and professional staff. Their job is to investigate and document the previous culture which is apparently no-longer present. To understand their intelligence, history and what became of them.

Scientists and academics are amongst those transported from Earth and perform menial tasks for the most part. As their skills, knowledge and understanding is often superior to those working for The Mandate, their captors occasionally appreciate or at least utilise them.

The book captures the reader right from the start with the arrival of a new shipment of dissidents to the planet. We get to know about the situation on Earth that has led to their deportation and transportation. Essentially a one-way trip with no return to Earth likely, even if they survive the hard working and living conditions. Concepts such as “Acceptable Wastage” of prisoners are introduced, giving the reader some idea of The Mandate and their World-view.

The main protagonist, the narrator of the book, is a fascinating and engaging character. An academic by training, he is naturally not happy about his current circumstances but cannot help but be intellectually curious about the new planet and the possibility of intelligent life. He is also hilarious in his observations and commentary of his current predicament, describing life inside the labour camp and activities outside, on the new planet, as he is forced to support exploration and supposedly scientific activities.

We are introduced to a few of the governing elites from the Mandate, including administrators, scientists and technicians. The prisoners are a more diverse mix of anti-Mandate dissidents, criminals, scientists and others who may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The author builds the plot around these intriguing characters including their relationships, shifting or unknown alliances and genuine friendships. A main premise of the plot, is how and why some of the prisoners, the narrator included, remain fascinated and intrigued with their new environment. This attitude remains despite their predicament of being an expendable resource in a dangerous, hostile world, with little hope of a return to Earth. This desire for scientific knowledge competes with the individuals desire for survival in various unsettling scenarios.

The protagonist is introduced to the exploration activities, including encounters with various lifeforms. Horrific events are sometime presented with lightheartedness or at least a dark humour as the reader learns about the planet, the work, uprisings and always in the background, the possibility of intelligent life.

As more ominous events take place, and casualties increase, the humour is reduced, to be replaced by sheer human tenacity, bravery and companionship. Despite these events, optimism and faith in the human condition returns as the secrets of this planet and the possibility of intelligent life are gradually revelled.

A thought-provoking and thoroughly satisfying book. The plot is exciting, well thought-out and developed. It is a fascinating read, occasionally horrifying and sometime drily funny. There is great character development, with the key players well developed, engaging and believable.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. A wonderful addition to Mr Tchaikovsky’s body of work. I wish him all the very best with the publication.

I am always excited when a new Adrian Tchaikovsky book comes out and I was not disappointed. In Alien Clay the author manages to combine some very thought provocing ideas about the nature of totalitarianism with a fascinating and novel alternative form of biological evolution. At the same time the reader enjoys a roller coaster ride of survival on an alien planet. . A space colony of political misfits is humanities spearhead on what appears to be a benign new planet but they soon find that the regime that banished them and their guards are not all they need to overcome. They story of how they survive the planet's weird forms of life and their imprisonment there is a terrific yarn. For me the essence of science fiction is new worlds and novel ideas: this book is stuffed full of them.

Before Nineteen Eight-Four was published, George Orwell played with many of its themes in his other writings, especially his regular newspaper columns. In one of these he wrote something to the effect that even the strictest of totalitarian regimes would have, for a time, to respect natural laws: when designing a rocket, one had to proceed on the basis that two plus two equals four, even if the Party decided that the answer was five.

But only for a time. Complete power would dissolve this need, and in his new book Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky gives us a world - worlds - past that point, where the natural, as well as the social, sciences are expected to toe the line of The Mandate, the cabal that runs Earth now. The problems that leads to when they encounter alien life - truly alien life, not Star Trek style bipeds with funny faces - is a focus of this book. The narrator, a respected academic who's been purged for unorthodoxy, is condemned to a penal colony on an alien world, Kiln, where the effort is on to portray the missing race that constructed strange, ceramic towers now overrun by jungle, as a human analogue.

For humans, it's basically a death world, the alien flora and fauna aggressive, adaptive and dare I say it, subversive. Protective gear and decontamination are essential, yet only provided half-heartedly - after all, the workforce is expendable, and destined never to go home. Even the ships that bring them are minimal, as cheap as will serve, breaking up on arrival. Life is then brutal.

It's a tough gig, and Arton Daghdev, thirty light years from home, is hampered in his task by doubts - doubts about who betrayed him, doubts about who he may have betrayed, doubts about who he can trust now. That's how they get you, he tells himself several times. That's how we get you. In another parallel with Nineteen Eighty-Four, it's understood that, cornered by the Mandate, everyone will crack. And this is equally true of the invasive, ineluctable wildlife of Kiln, a tour de force of invention that Tchaikovsky manages to make both truly alien, almost incomprehensible, and therefore deeply threatening - but also, precisely because it so different, also utterly beyond the silly political games being played out by the invaders from Earth. It's a long time since I read SF with such a strange native flora and fauna. As I said above, it's not people in elaborate costumes, it's not life as we know it, Jim, it's - well, simply weird, challenging the human sense that we "are the first of things". I won't try and describe it both because that would rather spoil the story and because I'm not sure I can. You'll have to read the book to find out what's going on here.

What I will say is that Tchaikovsky is not only playing with exobiology here, he's also riffing off parallels between revolution - its failure modes explored at length - and that alien life, he's studying the powerful and their failures of imagination, their inability to understand that the world will not be what they wish, because they wish - in a salvo that could be aimed at climate denialism and species destruction we see here the ultimate consequence of that failure and it's not a safe or pretty story.

At the same time, Daghdev himself (the g is silent) is a fascinating study, a figure who gives away very little of his past - his story leaking out rather than being set down - and whose relationships and likely behaviour in his new setting are mysterious. The novel is as much a discovery of him as it is of Kiln - and what a novel it is, one I'd strongly recommend, deeply compelling form the first page to the last.

Alien Clay draws an eerie parallel between Arton's radical past, with its "revolutionary sub-committees" and the roiling, baffling array of alien life to be found on Kiln.

This was my first Adrian Tchaikovsky book and I was really pleased with my choice. I’ve only recently started reading science fiction and this was an interesting story full of politics, prisons on the backdrop of a compelling planet called, Kiln.

It begins as Arton Daghdev is dropped on the planet, Kiln, to serve a prison sentence as punishment to science uprising which has been outlawed on earth. Kiln has been inhabited before and the purpose of the prisoners is to research the local fauna, flora and buildings to determine what lived there before while being infected by the environment.

This was a slow build and I really didn’t know where it was going to go. Some of the descriptions reminded me of a the spores in The Last of Us series and it was a little creepy at times.

I would recommend this to science fiction fans and I am going to read more from the author.

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review,

About halfway through this one, I really didn't know whether or not I should press on with it: I loved the world, but felt distanced from the story by the flippant narrator. Alien Clay is a standalone SF novel from the prolific Adrian Tchaikovsky, set on the exoplanet of Kiln, a place of burgeoning, abundant alien life but no obviously intelligent species. Humans are determined to find out who built the mysterious structures on the surface of the planet, complete with a series of hieroglyphs that seem to signify an unknown language. However, under the Mandate, free scientific investigation is forbidden: it's a totalitarian government that pushes an anthropocentric view of the world and is challenged by any suggestion of sentient aliens (interestingly, this is the second SF novel published March 2024 that uses this human-centric premise; the other one is Grace Curtis's Floating Hotel ).

So far, so good: I loved the fascinating horrors of Kiln and, although the solution to the central question about the planet is pretty obvious, I looked forward to watching how it would unfold. But that narrator! The protagonist, Arton Daghdev, is a xenobiologist exiled to a labour camp on Kiln for his dissident views. Life at the camp is brutal, and Daghdev clearly deals with it through humour. Unfortunately, while I didn't dislike Daghdev as a character, I found his defence mechanisms incredibly jarring; we can never engage with the seriousness of what's really going on, because he's always in the way. I felt like I was reading a weird cross between Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation and John Scalzi's The Kaiju Preservation Society, to the extent that it kept wrongfooting me when the administration crack down violently, because the world felt softer than that. Daghdev's narration improves somewhat after the midpoint, when the plot actually starts and [he begins to become part of the hive mind of Kiln, but I still felt there would have been much more scope to explore this insightful take on collective consciousness if the voice of the novel had been different.

I'm glad I pressed on and finished this, but it struck me as something to speed through perhaps more quickly than the author intended. I think Tchaikovsky has two modes as a writer, properly serious SF, like the impressive Children of Time series, and this more lighthearted register, and I personally need to make sure I avoid the latter. Readers who liked his And Put Away Childish Things, for example, are likely to get on much better with this one. 3.5 stars.

A fantastic read from an author at the top of his game. This alien world brought vividly to life. Good plot and characters especially Arton can he survive this strange world. I could not put it down, highly recommend. Thanks to Pan Macmillan and Netgalley for this review copy.

I found Alien Clay to be a relatively fun, fast paced sci fi adventure. The plot was intriguing and the world building had me hooked from the start, with the opening scene of Arton being launched into the planet especially gripping. However I found many of the characters somewhat lacking and unfortunately I do not think this is a book that will last particularly long in the memory.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a world where symbiosis is the norm - the world building is superb giving a truly Alien atmosphere to the book .
Arton Dagdev , a failed coup survivor , has been transferred to the 'Excursions' teams sent out clean the areas around the newly found artefacts .
Against this background the Mandate only allows for everything being black or white , nothing in between is allowed - but Humanity has always had trouble accepting such defined ideas .
This makes for an interesting paradigm and the story explores the revelations the planet and the characters reveal - humanity has always posed difficult questions and ideas that do not always fall into just one ideal .
This is yet another fascinating book from the Author whose fertile mind continues bring worlds to life often posing questions that cannot be answered .
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own