I’m grateful to the publisher for granting me an early copy.
Eerily similar to some of this author’s previous works, this is a very good story. Full of sentient and omnipresent minds, alien creatures and the depravities of mankind’s behaviour, this is a strong story which is very readable.
Echoes of previous stories aside, the overall story is dramatic and evolving, once again populated by endearing and strong characters which are the foundations of this author’s books.

This is my first read by this author, and my first hardcore sci-fi in a while.
This is skilful, erudite, imaginative writing of the first degree. The handling of the first contact theme is original and innovative, and the progress in the understanding between the two species is brilliant.
I will confess to finding the scene setting to be a little laborious, and the in depth science discussions overwhelming at times. This is not a high-octane adventure but a reflective journey. The ending tho is mind-blowingly good. I was totally immersed in the narrative by then.
I will definitely be looking for more titles by this author

I always start a Tchaikovsky book expecting to love it, and invariably become surprised when it exceeds my already high expectations.

It's classic. If you liked his Children of Time series (especially Book 2), this is right in your wheelhouse. It also has some 60s sci fi vibes a la world exploration, with a modern twist.

I loved the characters, the setting, the plot points, the ending. Never stop writing, Tchaikovsky. Please.

I have to salute Adrian Tchaikovsky’s imagination, the more I read of his greater catalogue of written works the more I am in awe of his ability to transport the reader into a realm of the fantastical.

Shroud is no exception to this as we follow the journey of two unlikely hero’s, attempting the improbable while facing the seemingly impossible odds of an alien world, filled with an entity unlike any reasonable mind could create. Yet Adrian Tchaikovsky fulfils his own brief in such an imaginable & creative way, that once you start reading it’s hard to stop.

As first contact stories go this is by far the most imaginative I have read so far, dividing the narrative and therefore the perspective of both the ‘Protagonists’ & the ‘Shrouded’ themselves. This unique framing is a refreshing take on the first contact genre, offering the reader a vision of the world of Shroud that perhaps could not have so easily been depicted otherwise.

I cannot urge you enough to pick up a copy of this book upon its release in February ‘25. You will not be disappointed, Adrian Tchaikovsky has once again proved he is a master at what he does best.

Thank you to #Tor books #PanMacmillan & to #NetGalley for allowing me the utmost privilege an honour of this eARC copy of ‘Shroud’ to read & review.

The comments & opinions above are solely my own & are reflective of my experience reading this amazing book.

I’m not typically a science fiction reader but I think Adrian Tchaikovsky might just be an exception to the rule. I loved Alien Clay and I love this. While both follow humankind meeting alien lifeforms both books are very unique. Making this reading experience just as fresh and exciting as when I read Alien Clay.

This book does an amazing job of showing what we can overcome during struggle and in situations where you are in way over your head, this book is wonderfully dark, with survival aspects and it will absolutely keep you on the edge of your seat while reading,

This is another excellent example of Adrian Tchaikovsky exploring alienness by dumping some unfortunate protagonists into a hostile and incomprehensible alien environment - the planet Shroud - with insufficient resources to get safely home.

"Under no circumstances can a human survive Shroud’s inhospitable surface – but a catastrophic accident forces Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne to make an emergency landing in a barely adequate escape vehicle. Alone, and fighting for survival, the two women embark on a gruelling journey across land, sea and air in search of salvation."

The alienness of the life on Shroud is so very… alien. This is something that Adrian Tchaikovsky seems to excel at. It put me in mind of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris - where the alienness is so unfathomable that it’s difficult to see where an attempt at first contact could even begin.

The hostility of the environment on Shroud is well established in the first section of the book, but the central two thirds of the story chronicles the journey of Juna and Mai, constrained within a vehicle barely adequate for the task, to reach a place from which they have at least a slim chance of being rescued. This central section falls into a pattern of Juna and Mai lurching from one risky and unknown situation to the next, as their predicament gets progressively more dire.

Throughout the story, the incredible “otherness” of the native life on Shroud is superbly drawn, with the story peppered with short sections from the point of view of that native life. The gulf of understanding between the humans and the natives is the driving power behind the narrative, and builds the story to a very satisfying final chapter, as the difficulties in one life form’s meaningful comprehension of the other comes to a head.

My only reservation was that, for me, I was losing engagement with the story during the long trek to safety. As Juna and Mai found themselves in increasingly difficult situations, I found myself just treading water waiting for the narrative tide to turn. When the tide did turn, though, I was back and fully invested in the story’s conclusion, and the pay-off at the end is quite rewarding.

As with Alien Clay, if you’re new to Adrian Tchaikovsky, I wouldn’t necessary start here - but it’s an imaginative and thought provoking exploration of alienness.

Thank you #NetGalley and Pan MacMillan / Tor for the free review copy of #Shroud in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Wow, what a story!
Thank you to NetGalley and Pan MacMillan for this arc!
I’m not quite sure where to start with this one. I knew of Adrian Tchaikovsky (and had met him at a convention) but I’d never tried any of his work before this one and now I’ve got to read more.
I’ve never had quite the same mixture of emotions reading anything else: anxiety yet fascination and curiosity. The start of this felt very much like a kind of space-horror and, though this shifted somewhat, the sense of existential dread never really left the story and I loved that. And in contrast to this vastness and alien atmosphere was the really emotive and touching human story centring around the two protagonists. I really liked the characterisation in this. It was understated and natural and I felt like I really understood each character. Tchaikovsky was just so good at slowly building our understanding of them and letting their relationship grow organically. They were human and flawed and I really wanted to give some of them a hug.
The non-human characters were also brilliantly done. A masterclass on “show don’t tell” which some of my recent reads have been a little lacking in. They felt truly alien and there were just some excellent moments where I just went “OH”, quickly followed by “oh no.” I see a lot of people say they dislike first person perspectives, but it was clearly consciously used here and it was really effective.
The world building similarly felt very understated. It was a background to this story but it was really clever and horribly believable! The start of the book felt a little bit bogged down with some of the initial “setting the scene” but it was really well integrated for the rest.
This was overall a brilliant, emotive and often powerful exploration of humanity and connection, even between beings that have so little in common on the surface. Please keep an eye out for this if you’re in any way a fan of sci-fi or stories exploring alien perspectives. My only complaint is that I want to know what happens next! I suspect this will be a stand-alone but I really want to return to the world of Shroud in the future.

Shroud is an epitomical example of Tchaikovsky’s ingenious world building and memorable non-human characters.

The feat of world building, from the flora and fauna, to the weather and chemical composition of the environment, is beyond anything I’ve ever encountered. It felt like I learned some new things from a scientific perspective too.

The story gets off to a slowish start, aboard a ship orbiting Shroud – a moon intended to be harvested for its resources. There is a lot of dense hard science thrown at you from the get go and a dystopian-esque, hierarchical human equivalent of the civil service in space. This is where we are introduced to our characters, through the POV of Juna – the assistant to the director of a special research team.

The characters live in a universe where humanity seek to expand by prospecting alien worlds and moons, but at a cost. The Concerns, akin to business-like organisations, measure the wage-worth of their inhabitants – employees – and if you don’t provide value to the cause, you’re put back on ice until your services might be needed again.

As things develop and the action shifts to the moon of Shroud itself. This is where the story picks up in pace and Tchaikovsky’s wild imagination really takes on a life of its own.

Despite some hard science and completely alien landscapes and beings, I never felt lost (not as lost as our human characters, anyway). The author manages to describe everything in a way that is accessible and vivid
Shroud is suspenseful, with some real moments of horror, but with a smattering of well placed humour that helps ease the mounting sense of unease.

The non-human characters are as weird as weird gets. The Shrouders also provide a secondary POV, giving a unique perspective on first contact with aliens.

The character development through adversity is done well, both from a human and alien perspective. The Shrouders’ development throughout the story is fascinating, both in how we perceive them, through their interactions with our characters’ pod, but also in how they perceive themselves, their world, and the alien humans. Tchaikovsky really shines in these moments of realisation and learning from the aliens.

Tchaikovsky is excellent with his social commentary through his speculative fiction. Another aspect I appreciated from Shroud is the strong theme of connection running through it – highlighted by the disconnection of humanity, but how we could achieve so much more by being more connected with each other in our common goals, was a message not lost on me, especially in this ever increasing fractious world we live in right now. We (humanity) have become disconnected from ourselves and each other in this future universe. The need for meaningful connection is portrayed well through both POVs throughout.

Tchaikovsky really goes beyond the realms of imagination with Shroud – a world full of mindblowing alien life and landscapes, based on (what I believe to be) well thought out scientific ideas. This is a hard sci-fi adventure done in the most brilliant and accessible way.

3.5 stars

This kind of feels like it could be Alien Clay, if the “Alien” part was synonymous with the Ridley Scott movie. It feels very dark (figuratively, not just literally) and in several places definitely has that slight sci-fi-horror edge to it. I liked that, but I think the book overall is not quite my type of sci-fi.

There are only two main characters here, and the enclosed space we follow them in for the majority of the book makes for some fantastic character-building opportunities, but I don’t think we got as much of that as circumstances suggest we might have. Instead, the character was largely given over to the Shrouded, the aliens of this world (although, as a sidenote, they are the native species, so technically, our humans here are the aliens…).

I didn’t much like the perspectives we got here from the Shrouded – they just didn’t feel right to me. This has been something I’ve noted in other books and it’s clear to me that it’s a device I’m not much a fan of. In Children of Ruin, I didn’t like the hive-mind perspective that felt disjointed, but certainly alien. Here, the Shrouded perspective just felt too human, and it was a bit off-putting. Seems like you can’t win with me on that one!

We have three main parts to the book in terms of theme and setting, and I think the transition between these is a bit too sudden – the first transition is necessarily so, so that’s fine and was well-handled, but the transition between parts two and three felt a bit abrupt.

I did find the first part in particular to be incredibly densely written. It was full of information and science and technology in big long paragraphs, and it felt like it took me twice as long as it usually would to read individual pages. Once we got into “part two” (my estimation, not the parts the book is actually divided into), things moved along at a much better pace for me.

I think overall this was a good book, but it’s definitely not my favourite Tchaikovsky. Once again though, he showcases an incredible imagination that I just don’t see anyone else getting close to, especially not at the frequency we see new work from him.

That last line really blew my mind! After that soul-crushing journey through daunting alien landscapes, the way this book ends really leaves you thinking...

RTC

A mining expedition to a distant galaxy discovers a sinister moon which is screaming with electromagnetic activity. The exploratory team's investigations reveal a version of life there which has never been witnessed before, but when disaster pulls two of them down to Shroud's surface, they must use all their wits to survive in a completely hostile environment.

Tchaikovsky displays his seemingly unlimited imagination again here as he constructs a world and populates with incredible forms of life. Part of the narrative is told from the perspective of Shroud's residents who have come to grapple with the universe without ever having encountered light.

This book is light on story. Once the two protagonists are stranded on the moon's surface, the plot plods along at a sedentary pace as they make the long journey, all the odds against them, to possible salvation. A bit more pace would have been appreciated.

That being said, the lead characters are fun to spend time with as they discover, bit by bit, a world which seems to defy all their expectations. This is a tale of grappling with the unknown in a mysterious and bizarre universe and just about managing to make headway.

Far in the future human greed forced humanity to leave Earth after stripping it of all resources. To make sure humankind survives no matter the cost, humans have taken to stripping planets and moons for materials. This is the starting point of Shroud.

Our FMC, Juna Ceelander, and Mai Ste Etienne end up stranded on Shroud, a moon void of illumination, after a disaster that destroyed their spaceship. Following them through the story, and their struggles really show what we can overcome against overwhelming odds.

Adrian skillfully spins a tale that explore what the future could be if we keep exploiting Earth, and what could happen if we meet intelligent life that evolved in darkness.

There's so much I want to express but I'm speechless.

If you have already read Alien Clay know that despite it also being humankind meeting another lifeform on an alien planet, it is nothing like it. That Adrian Tchaikovsky can spin another sci-fi tale this detailed and yet so distinct is mind-blowing. If you haven't read either I encourage you do it ASAP.

I recommend this book to every sci-fi reader/enthusiast. It is very heavy on the sci-fi jargon, so it can be a bit difficult getting into if the reader is not well-versed in it. It might be tough, but it's damn well worth it!

5 well-deserved stars

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the eARC!

I love Adrian Tchaikovsky. His every book is a testament to his genius and creativity. But I did not love Shroud. It’s too complex for my simple brain.

The first few introductory chapters give us an insight into the world of corporate efficiency and scientists desperate to prove their use. And then the immediate change is scenery and the main part of the book begins, completely unconnected and overwhelming. Pages of descriptions of the aliens - briars, basketworks, made from metal. It took a lot of processing power for my brain to understand what the author was describing, the uncontrollable need to imagine what it looks like, how it acts, and thinks, - clearly designed not to be so easily comprehensible.
“Any interpretation I made of it would be nonsensical anthropomorphism, far more so than if I had projected human intent onto a cat, lizard, or beetle even.”

Between 20% and 80%, it’s basically just two scientists in a pod, on a trek through an alien landscape. The only action comes from the alien biosphere, the only threat comes from the alien biosphere, and the conversation is repetitive at best. The landscape changes, mountains, seas, caves, and different types of aliens, but still all based on the same idea of wanting to eat our MCs. Mixed with the detailed description of the alien world makes this relatively short book, feel quite long.

But then finally the ending kicks in, and we get the culminating point of intelligent alien life coming to blows with human ingenuity. A bittersweet ending, teaching us, humans, that there is more in the universe than we can easily grasp.

The best part of the book was the chapters from the alien perspective. Reminding me a bit of “Alien Clay” also by Tchaikovsky.

Both Alien Clay and Shroud are ingenious, and Shroud was much more complex in the depth of the alien design and spectrum, but Alien Clay had more human politics driving the plot, which makes the action feel faster and the time constraints more pressing. Also, I listened to Alien Clay audiobook which made it so much more appealing. Shroud is amazing, deep, and complex, it’s a strong 4 stars, but I believe, the audiobook will make this book so much more palatable.

I am grateful to the kind people at Pan Macmillan for providing an advance copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. 

‘Shroud’ 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 to enjoy this one. Although I highly recommend you do ! I thoroughly enjoyed ‘Shroud’; taking my time to read it slowly, prolonging the pleasure.

The book is set sometime in the future and begins with a prologue. A young woman, Juna, recently brought out of the deep induced-sleep of space travel, survives an accident in a space craft orbiting an apparently lifeless Moon, named Shroud, far from Earth. She has been expelled to ‘safety’ in a small escape module. She thinks to herself:

“I’m not supposed to be here. Not in this thing. Not down here…on Shroud.”

The early chapters backtrack in time, providing context and introducing some of the characters. The Earth is largely uninhabitable due to conflicts. A Corporation, the Concern, has replaced Governments, with a mission to populate and exploit far reaches of the Solar System. Earth’s inhabitants, those who have survived and are ‘fortunate’ enough to be of some use to the Concern, take part in these missions. Until they are no longer required. Juna, an endearing and optimistic young woman, works for the Concern and is the main narrator in this book.

She is part of a team, that was orbiting a Moon named Shroud, in an area of dead, lifeless planets. We learn a little about the Juna’s team. The dynamics and relationships. Juna is the glue that holds the team together. Shroud has been approved for exploration and mineral exploitation. Before the accident she reflects on her lifestyle, perhaps with a little sarcasm and a lot of reality:

“We were all properly grateful…We were lucky enough to live…”

Juna is a clever and likeable; someone with whom the reader will identify and enjoy. Despite her position in life as a low-level employee, she is full of spirit, funny, sometimes sarcastic. But also a realist, eager to survive, competent, doing her job to the best of her abilities, knowing full well that there are far worse alternatives than being an Assistant working for the Concern, evaluating, exploiting and inhabiting distant and sometimes dangerous Solar Systems.

Shroud has an extremely harsh and brutal environment. Cold and barren with a toxic atmosphere. And completely dark, always in the shadow of a nearby planet. Although unsuitable for life of any sort, initial analysis by the Concern team suggests it is a candidate for exploitation using robots, robotic equipment and drones. Juna and her colleagues do not intend to go anywhere near the surface of Shroud ! They are given the task of investigating some unexpected signals and radio-noise, essentially static, emanating from Shroud. Drones are sent to investigate, data, including some video recordings are evaluated and suggest some sort of life may exist. Flora or perhaps fauna may be the source of the signals. Then the accident happens. Juna and a couple of her team end up on Shroud. Alive but stranded. This book tells the story of their journey on Shroud, to escape to the safety of orbit, if indeed there is anyone up there to rescue them.

On Shroud, they have some resources for living, some mobility in their escape vehicle, but hardly any means of communications or defence. They encounter up-close, the source of the signals and noise they picked-up while orbiting and observed from the drone recordings. It is not too much of a plot-spoiler to mention that Shroud has inhabitants. After some encounters and unfortunate incidents, Juna muses to herself:

“…we could only try to understand them, as perhaps they were trying to understand us…”

The scene is thus set for a wonderful story of engaging characters and otherworldly incidents as Juna and what remains of her team, attempt to return to the relative safety of orbiting Shroud.

Mr Tchaikovsky builds his characters slowly, letting us come to know them better from their lived-experiences, their role in the Concern and for the unfortunates on Shroud, how they act under pressure. Juna and another young colleague, Mai, are both particularly endearing. They are brave, capable and tenacious while honestly accepting their chance of rescue is a small number, just shy of zero. Given their dangerous environment and threatening circumstances they somehow retain their humanity, their morality and also their humour. Quite something in a completely dark world, the environment only slightly illuminated by their vehicles with very limited lighting. Mr Tchaikovsky builds the atmosphere partially from what they see, but largely from what is unseen; often sensed or imagined. The quite frankly, horrific situations, are tempered by humour, sarcasm, human warmth as well as a strong desire to survive. The dialogue and thoughts often made me smile and occasionally chuckle aloud.

A close relationships develops between Juno and Mai as they share this adversity. A more complex, less well-defined relationship develops between them and the entity they encounter on Shroud. Reflecting on these events and outcomes, Juna thinks to herself:

“…just because they were sapient, didn’t mean they were nice.”

And a little later, some light-hearted pragmatism:

“Scientific curiosity is all very well but it doesn’t make you immortal…”

Although Juna is the primary narrator of the book, an alternative narration periodically comes from the entity they have encountered on Shroud. This is a fascinating aspect of the book and allows Mr Tchaikovsky to portray human-like characteristics in a non-human mind. A completely different way of sensory perception, learning, data retention and decision processing. There are less technical, more social aspects as well. Themes such as curiosity, memory, nurturing and self-sacrifice are explored from a unique perspective.

Both the Shroud entity and the human visitors view the other as strangers, from somewhere else. Aliens. Both wonder, at first, if the other is even sapient life, or perhaps some sort of low-level life-form, only capable of reflexive or echoing behaviour. The dynamics of the relationship forms almost a parallel plot, as Juna and Mai endeavour to survive and attempt somehow to leave Shroud. Mr Tchaikovsky explores various aspects of this First Contact. Themes such as communication, comprehension, learning, trust, benevolence and evolution are explored.

I loved this book. The horror is balanced by the humour and warmth displayed by the main characters and occasionally by the ‘kindness of strangers’. Various ‘human’ characteristics such as bravery, curiosity, understanding and tolerance are exhibited by many, but not all, of the participants in the story. The concept of First-Contact with a non-human Lifeform in such a brutal environment has stayed with me well after I have finished reading. One wonders if Mr Tchaikovsky will revisit Shroud again in another book. I’d love to know ‘what comes next’. But if not, this book is quite sufficient. A thought-provoking and very satisfying read. The plot is well developed, with twists and turns. Dryly funny in places. Endearing and credible characters are found throughout. Some ragbags as well ! And the ending is fulfilling, surprising and I think, ultimately uplifting. Although the reader is left wondering and hoping that the future for Juna and Mai, these sometimes lonely, probably damaged characters, is somewhat kinder than their past. A Great Read and a wonderful addition to Mr Tchaikovsky’s body of work. I wish him all the very best with the publication.

Will Tchaikovsky ever fail? Another brilliant story that only Adrian can write. When will he stop?? Never, i hope

A first contact novel by the great Adrian Tchaikovsky. What at some point looks like is going to be a horror novel due to the prominent darkness becomes a truly remarkable first contact novel full of action with human and alien POVs. Another great 'eat the rich' history from this author.

Frankly this was not the most enjoyable read for me. As always from Tchaikovsky the writing is impeccable, and he presents very interesting ideas but unfortunately as can be seen in some of his other science fiction work I find that he gets lost in the science of it.

A large portion of the start of this book is sciency jargon where the narrative takes a massive backseat and the characters are largely non-existent. We get told the gist of the premise and who the main character is, but it’s not particularly well done.

Once we do get into the story a bit more we find that his characters within this story are unlikeable and quite shallow. They served the purpose of providing a narrative and showing the strangeness of the world of Shroud through a lens that as a reader we can understand but I found it very difficult to connect to them and they ended up becoming a massive hindrance to the enjoyment of the world presented within shroud.

If you enjoy stories that explore characters or want to be able to connect with those that you read about this probably isn't for you. But if you enjoy the heavier side of sci fi and the way Tchaikovsky explores these ideas then you may have a better time with this than I did. While I loved the Children of Time, the faults or issues that one may have with that story are very prevalent in this novel, but in a manner that is more blatant and impossible to avoid.

"Let me put this into words you can understand."

Let's not bury the lede here. This is one of the best books I've read this year, and if a better SF novel is published in 2025 we're in for a good time. I can't remember the last time I was this impressed - or this moved - by a sci-fi book.

The best first contact stories invariably have something to say about what it means to be human. Putting us next to another sapient species means we inevitably begin to draw comparisons. How do we define "alien" if not by pointing at it and saying "not human"? In defining what makes something alien we inevitably are forced to reckon with what makes us human.

Shroud puts humanity on full display, peeling us apart piece by piece and looking at the resulting mess. It's a novel of both the best parts of human nature - ingenuity, curiosity, empathy, resilience - and the worst - violence, the endless cycle of colonisation and extraction, the reduction of people to little more than cogs in a machine. The arrogance to think that we're uniquely special.

Tchaikovsky's writing here is, I think, the best in his career. I've never read a book of his that I didn't at least enjoy, but in the past - specifically in the Shadows Of The Apt series - I've sometimes got a bit lost in his action scenes and the way he describes "weird" things. Shadows... was over a decade ago, though (The Empire In Black And Gold, terrifyingly, 16 years ago), and he's had plenty of time to improve his craft. Shroud is the evidence that he's put the work in. The frozen moon of Shroud is a truly weird, alien place, populated by some of the strangest aliens I've ever seen in fiction, but the prose is crystal clear. I can picture this world, and the awful things that happen to our main characters during their journey across it, like I was right there with them. The pacing, too, is great. This rattles along like the best of thrillers. There isn't a single wasted moment here. It's a proper gripping page turner, evidenced by the fact that I write this after having stayed up until 2AM against all my better judgement to finish reading it.

Over the past few years I've been really drawn to moody sci-fi horror. In 2020 I wrote The Wretched, a solo journalling game about being really stressed and having a terrible time on your own in space. Some of my favourite SF of recent years has had very similar themes. The Wretched was absolutely a response to the unique isolation of COVID lockdowns, and I suspect that's also true of much of the fiction along similar lines that's emerged since then.

Shroud is also a novel about having a terrible time in space, but it's specifically a novel about having a terrible time in space and leaning on shared bonds and our connections with other humans to help us endure and survive. Even in its most bleak moments, even when our worst impulses as a species are on display, it's still a novel that has some hope for the future. As I was reading it I couldn't help feeling like it feels like a novel about healing and rebuilding. As with a lot of recent SF I think this is a book that was forged in the aftermath of lockdowns, but it's a book that's able to imagine a coming together of people in the aftermath of catastrophe rather than one that wallows in isolation.

Shroud is released in February 2025, and I can't recommend it highly enough. I'm very grateful to Tor and Pan Macmillan for furnishing me with an ARC. Don't sleep on this on when it lands.

This is a book about humanity. What it is, what it means, how it's expressed, and how it affects us. It's also a damned fine sci-fi adventure yarn.

Told through two mostly alternating points of view, one human, one alien, the narrative follows a human resource-stripping mission sent out ahead of the greater human diaspora to find and grab all the resources they can, and where applicable establish waystations for future humans to use and colonise. Along the way they discover Shroud, a tidally-locked moon of a gas giant, where the atmosphere is so thick that at the surface there is nothing but darkness. Well, darkness, and life. And when disaster strikes and two of the humans, Juna and Mai, get caught on the surface with nothing but their tiny pod to keep them alive, that life begins to take an interest in them.

As I mentioned at the top of this review, this book is about what it means to be human, and while the humans in this book are recognisably us, they're a version of us that's become consumed by corporate excess, absorbed into the gestalt that is the corporation machine, commodified, and ultimately dehumanised by the world they live in and the society they belong to. Spending most of their time in sleep pods, 'shelved', as it's referred to, the main human characters are consigned to an existence in which they're nothing more than interchangeable parts in the greater organism that is the corporation, which in turn is the ship and its mission.

The alien life of Shroud, on the other hand, is a gestalt that has fractured, a hive mind that can only maintain its memories and reason by staying close to its constituent parts. And should one or more of those parts get separated from the whole, a new colony is formed, a new mind begins.

Just like the uplifted species Tchaikovsky gives us in his <i>Children of Time</i> series, the aliens here are ridiculously well written, and genuinely feel alien. But then again, so do the humans to some degree. At one point Juna, the human narrator of the story, compares the Shrouders to ants, but clearly doesn't see that the same comparison could be made of the humans themselves.

As with pretty much all of Tchaikovsky's high-concept sci-fi, the writing here is a seamless blend of technical exposition and character-driven exploration. The growing sense of despair and defeat felt by the human narrator is perfectly captured throughout the developing story, and the sense of wonder and enlightenment that fills the Shrouders as they learn more about the strange creatures that have invaded their world is just as palpable.

There are a lot of moments throughout this book where I wanted to slap one or more of the human characters, but it's the ending that ultimately got to me. The final wrap-up, and the way in which everything is brought full circle, almost had me throwing my kindle across the room in frustration. But in a good way. Even now, a week and a half after finishing it, that ending still sticks with me, and that, above all else, is why I love this book.

Definitely a strong and well-earned five-stars, and definitely one I'd recommend you read.

A prospecting ship finds what promises to be an exploitable moon. Although the surface is very hostile to humans weatherwise, extremely cold and swirling with high winds in an atmosphere of sulphur and hydrogen, there are many recoverable chemicals which can be extracted. An unforeseen accident send two of the crew down to the surface, where to there amazement there are seemingly sentient beings, which observe them and later help them to travel across the surface to the lunar pole from where they can be recovered to the ship. Once there it is decided to put the mining operation into top gear, but the creatures on the surface start to capture pieces of equipment, which they seem to be able to learn from and copy. A lot has been invested in the operation now and that if it is to succeed conflict between those below and those above is inevitable. As usual from Adrian Tchaikovsky, a gripping story of immens imagination.