One of my favourite Sci-Fi short stories is a conversation between two aliens who have just discovered that the radio signals that they have been intercepting from the new planet actually emanate from sentient meat. They are expecting an enlightened civilisation of non-corporeal beings and are, understandably, horrified when the most intelligent species on the planet just happens to be a sack of flesh with electrical impulses that drive the bodies.
Shroud was like taking that short story and making it into an epic adventure filled with cross-species miscommunications and the kind of xenophobia that presents as arrogance and hubris.
Humans believe the permanently dark and inhospitable planet moon of Shroud to be devoid of intelligent life but probably rich in minerals and farmable substances. But after an accident sends two women down to the planet who will have to battle not only the hostile elements, but the planets impossible alien life in order to make it back alive.
Like with most of Mr Tchaikovsky's books, I had to read with a dictionary by my side as he throws out five syllable words like confetti, and makes you rue the basic biology courses that do not translate to the fascinating and detailed world he creates.
I honestly wish that all of his books come with illustrations because sometimes it is hard to visualise the plethora of diverse life-forms, biomes and sentience that he writes about.
Much like The Doors of Eden, he takes biological evolution down different tracks and creates creatures so bizarre and yet plausible that it makes you want to believe in the multi-verse theory because surely he has been there to describe such a wonderful world.

The POV switches were done well between the humans and the aliens and flowed nicely.
Although I found the ending a little melancholy, it played into the human greed angle very well and was probably the only way the encounter could go.
Highly recommended.

Shroud is an incredibly frustrating book to read.

Not because of the writing style, the plot, or anything negative, but because it acknowledges and challenges the implicit biases that so often happen when creating a unique alien world and species. This is Adrian Tchaikovsky’s comfortable niche in writing, and I couldn’t help but think back to his book Children of Time. There are a lot of similarities here.

Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne are part of an interstellar human race focused on worth. How many resources you consume in relation to what you contribute towards the ever-expanding Humanosphere. Mai is an engineer and a good one, Juna is more of a politician, an assistant who exists to facilitate relationships between the boss and the special projects team assigned to investigate the moon informally called Shroud, a dark, inhospitable planet full of life that exists outside the realm of human understanding.

Through events, they crash on Shroud and must find their way to somewhere they hope they can be rescued from.

Simple enough premise. We’ve read this before, the humans overcome great odds and make sacrifices to survive, whilst learning something about themselves along the way. Give Tom Hanks an Oscar nomination and let’s be on our way.

What sets this apart, however, is that the characters are invariably wrong about more or less everything, and I’m not sure they actually did the introspection part properly. At least the humans certainly didn’t. Yes, they clear up some misunderstandings about resourcing and buffing (read the book and it’ll become clear) but they don’t seem to be irrevocably changed by their experiences on Shroud.

The book uses alternating chapters, one from the human’s perspective and one from the point of view of an alien mind which is both split into several different… minds…and also very singular. I was left a bit unclear what exactly the mind was but there was certainly enough material to form my own theories and perhaps a clear explanation is there, I just missed it. At the end of the day, it’s not necessary for every question raised to have an answer, and we get interludes throughout that try to explain the evolution of life on Shroud. The book is full of the science talk that is almost ubiquitous in Tchaikovsky’s work.

This is hard sci-fi.

Let me give you an example of the way the two POV’s assume incorrectly about each other. Whilst crossing a mountain, the alien creatures, each containing parts of the mind start gesticulating towards a cave entrance. The humans think the aliens are indicating a shortcut, whereas the aliens are rather emphatically warning them to stay away from the cave. They enter the cave and (as a friend of mine would say) shenanigans ensue.

The flora and fauna of Shroud are incredibly alien. Those controlled (or part of) by the alien mind have evolved a unique set of ways of surviving and thriving on Shroud. By building exoskeletons that can incorporate things like air bladders for floatation or even organic spanner hands.

There were shades of Stephen King (and Frank Darabont’s interpretation of) The Mist. There is no light on Shroud, nothing except the humans in their little exploration pod have eyes. So occasionally we have fleeting visions of monsters in the heavy, soupy atmosphere and limited torchlight, and sudden, invisible death.

Like Ted Lasso, the alien mind is curious. Curious about the stranger in their midst and use their curiosity well, following the humans and protecting them throughout. During a perilous event, it does feel like the humans are saved by the deus-ex machina of the alien minds a little too much, but the story moves on too briskly for me to remember to be bothered about it and look! A new science shiny thing!

This curiosity leads to a third act that stretches my malleable sense of disbelief, and which was harrowing to say the least. It had me rooting against the humans after a while, again harking back to other Tchaikovsky works. Like those other books I get the sense for me of many places where it would have been a good place to end, but the narrative carries on.

Where it does end is not entirely satisfying for me, but I can see how it would and could be. A sense of hope, similar to how the Final Architecture series ended, but without answering everything, and like I said, we don’t need all the answers.

Shroud was what I imagined the Jennifer Lopez movie Atlas should have been like, and what I imagined it would be from the first trailer. A hero, travelling in a mech, surviving on an alien planet. Thank you, Adrian Tchaikovsky, for giving me what J-Lo failed to.

If you like Adrian Tchaikovsky, you’ll love this, and these days who doesn’t like Adrian Tchaikovsky?



Many thanks to Pan Macmillan/ Tor for the advance review copy via NetGalley.

The desire for seeking new life is one of the core threads od science fiction. Learning to fear it in the War of the Worlds or accept it as for example in Contact there is some comfort in thinking we are not all alone in the night. Of course, this leaves the question would we recognise intelligent life if we met it? What actually would we need to be looking for? What would it also think of us? These are some of the ideas being cunningly explored in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s great new science fiction novel Shroud. A desperate tale of survival on a truly alien world and also asking us to reconsider what first contact actually means.

Juna Ceelander works in Special Projects part of the vast outgoing commercialisation of space going back to the days Earth was once inhabitable. Now the human race largely frozen in vast ships makes it ever increasingly journey system by system looking for material to aid the advance. Ceelander though now has Shroud to work out. A moon of a gas giant, locked in its orbit to never receive light, a toxic sludge of an atmosphere that cannot be breathed and a huge gravity increase compared to human standards. Shroud id inhabitable and yet on the radio spectrum it is howling across all the frequencies. The Special projects team are tasked with explaining why and if not, as always, they may be judged poor performers and refreeze. Unforeseen disasters though send Ceelander and a bright unsociable engineer named Mai Ste Etienne to Shroud in an experimental lander. They need to work out a way to escape but also soon find they are definitely not alone…or safe.

Shroud is stories entwined together. In one this is a desperate tale of survival told through Ceelander’s point of view. The early scenes set up the mystery and pure danger of Shroud. Tchaikovsky makes us see a world that humans cannot live in at all. The anathema to earth in so many ways. We learn that for Ceelander serving her company is all she can do resources are precious and cannot be wasted. The early parts of the story are scientists and engineers working through problems while the ship’s management and administrators await some evidence that research is valuable. There is a touch of the classic science fiction problem solving here as we see Mai in particular come up with experimental devise to explore this world and critically start to solve its mysteries. There is huge pleasure as each little breakthrough starts to explore Shroud and explain why it is and what exactly could live on this world. The ecosystem is starting to be glimpsed and clearly is not human at all and shown to be quite alien. Hence hearts sink when these two characters find themselves desperately landing on it and aware their employer is not the type to waste resources on a rescue mission. They are on their own. The good news is these two are a fascinating blend of an arch problem solver in the form of Mai and unusually Ceelander is something we don’t get often an all-rounder whose sill is actually helping people work together and at their best. This is not a tale of great biographical characters pushed to their limits. Tchaikovsky gives us two people stuck to couches keeping them alive in high gravity, lumped full of drugs to keep them functioning and a host of engineering issues to get them to find a place of safety. The drama and danger feels very real and this is more a tale of how could people survive to their endurance limits and as the story continues the impact on their bodies and their minds is really well handled – you can feel the exhaustion feeding into Ceelander’s narration. But let’s add some aliens to the mix too!

The second storyline is one of the most interesting ideas. Our lander duo finds themselves amidst the strange creatures they are now aware manage to survive on Shroud, dangerous to be around and there is a lot of of life on this planet preying on each other. As our lander slowly crawls along Shroud’s surface, we find a strange community of these creatures in particular following them like an ever-present danger getting closer. The human crew need to work out what their agenda ais and how to protect themselves or so we initially think. The human side of the book is told in chapters named Light but there are also chapters named Darkness and here we get the voice of Shroud’s own intelligent lifeform and their reaction to finding this strange creature crawling on its surface. There is s beautiful idea here that first contact is not a one-way street when you consider it. We as humans think as the default that intelligent civilisations must clearly be human but the idea behind Shroud is what if it was not at all like us in myriad ways? Would we recognise it then and would it recognise us as intelligent either/ Keeping this light on spoilers here I really liked the challenge Tchaikovsky has of conveying a completely different kind of evolution of life, what creatures could actually evolve and therefore why do they not see humans as life. The confusion of a planetary lander for example is well explored as is why may our idea that maths is universal may not work s we think. We as the reader get to see both sides try to explore the other and getting their conclusions wrong. A book that makes us question exactly what life is, and how it would recognise other forms of it but giving us a thrilling adventure at the same time is a huge achievement.

Of course, in the finale things do become clearer and this also may remind us that life on other worlds may not be simply at the level of humans it could actually prove to be beyond it and that set up an interesting final act as to exactly how do we get out of extreme danger and prove that we too are actually worth saving? Some lovely ideas from the book’s exploration of evolution and alien biology and progress all come together really smartly in these final acts to underline the book’s themes.

Shroud is an intriguing science fiction tale of survival that also questioning what we mean by humanity - only seeing life as human. You should come away here just thinking the universe is likely far stranger, more dangerous and more amazing than you were expecting it to be. What more does anyone need in a great story? It is highly recommended for readers who want to have their minds and universe expanded!

Another one of the good ecological sci-fi stories to come out of Adrian Tchaikovsky.

The plot is easy to understand but the story is complex. Two Humans are left on a zero oxygen, zero visibility world inhabited by an unknown dominant species. It is a story of survival, grit, and things beyond human comprehension.

Thanks Netgalley for the ARC

First contact meets Aliens
—
In Tchaikovsky’s latest, if ever humanity actually gets to another planet and finds sentient life there, we will be confronted by ourselves: our assumptions, our fears, our reactions, our humanity (whatever that means). In the wake of a freak accident, jack-of-all-trades Juna and super-precise engineer Mai have to literally feel their way in a sealed vehicle around a planetoid in utter darkness, surrounded only by alien creatures that communicate by radio waves, with new and increasing threats piling on even as time runs out…

I have to hand it to Tchaikovsky: he knows how to spin a yarn. Told almost entirely by Juna in the first person, the claustrophobia of the lander and the inhospitable world beyond are brilliantly rendered, and the second voice, from one of the aliens, is sketched out in enough detail to be comprehensible but utterly strange, a difficult tightrope to navigate. Like Aliens dialled up to thirteen, you’ll be looking behind yourself in the dark, just in case that noise isn’t just the wind, but something more sinister, something a lot less familiar.

Four and a half stars.

Read a finished copy.

Another excellent book from the author, who has rapidly become one of my favourites in SFF. A future of human exploitation of the stars sees an expedition to a new system, including a 'dark' moon, no light, inhospitible. During a ship accident two crew crashland and face a test of survival, as well as unforeseen levels of native life...

A story of human endurance, also with the perspective from at first unknown, unclear alien perspective, 'light' and 'dark' sections as headed in the text. As always a fully formed and believable alien world forms a strong backdrop to the novel. Won't say more due to possible spoilers, a story of two characters from a future which seems just as alien to us as the real thing, or endurance and the will to survive.

Actual rating 2.5/5 stars.

A pitch black and inhospitable moon is discovered and those who uncovered it named it Shroud. They could not survive there and it did not seem to want them, but when two of the crew crash land on its surface they must find a way to do just that.

A bonus star for the alien as well as human perspective this contained but, unfortunately, I found this a dry story with an anticlimactic ending. A space adventure should not be this slow but I found it focused on inward thought more than outward action and it just didn't suit my reading tastes at all. I'm all for a philosophical novel but this probed no deep questions about the meaning of life, so why such a slow pace? I did find the alien perspective an interesting development and appreciated how this differed to other space novels I have read but the book as a whole failed to properly grasp my interest.

This was a very good sci-fi read. Adrian is a master of sci-fi world building, and the way this switches POV to get into the minds of the aliens was genius -- and so effective in getting us into their heads and seeing things from their POV. The aliens are certainly alien and unsettling, and I enjoyed the ending of this. It was also refreshing to see a male author writing a female main character lead and doing it so well. I'm looking forward to reading more of his books in the future.

Truly alien. This isn’t the first hive mind book I’ve read by Tchaikovsky and I doubt it will be the last. This is a first contact, corporate-dystopian, survival horror sci-fi set on a world that is so unique it should be beyond imagination.

Two humans tasked with exploiting an element-rich moon, crash land onto its hostile surface and struggle to find their way back to humanity. If you’ve ever watched those videos of deep-sea exploration pods stumbling about in the depths of darkness looking for any sign of life and wanted to be in it, this is that.

Tchaikovsky takes the concept of evolution and proves just how strange it has the possibility to become. The ending is both hopeful and ominous and the philosophy underlying the survival thriller is incredibly well done. I’m still reeling.

What a book! It takes a bit time to get into it but then it sucks you really in and you stay there for a long time. I love the change of perspectives which are very well integrated and show much more details than I expected. I really appreciate this author‘s imagination and his capability to show so different possibilities. The book is so creative but at the same time also completely plausible thus quite a masterpiece. I really loved the characters (and not only the human ones).
It‘s one of the best books I‘ver read!

Wow - this is kinda like a horror author and a sci-fi author decided to have a baby. It's has elements of both horror and sci-fi and humanity has fallen into some really bad times. Essentially it is doing what it does best and asset stripping everything it possibly can from every planet in the universe. Except the moon and some rather terrible sounding planet both which have aliens and seemingly terrible monsters.

As to what happens and if humanity can conquer all, we'll read the book and find out!

A new hit by Tchaikovsky!!
This is one of those that I think its best to just go in blind with, but just know that it's a touching but exciting tale of survival, with some great anticapitalist commentary. About community, and the different ways it can appear.
Great worldbuilding too - it's set on a planet that's in complete darkness, but with a very interesting type of intelligent life. Great fun and I wholly enjoyed the whole book!

For the most part I tend to have more luck with reading Tchaikovsky when it comes to science-fiction. So I was quite looking forward to this book. Unfortunately it didn't quite work for me as a whole but it still had some interesting things.

In Shroud we meet our main character Juna as she awakes from a cryo chamber. Their ship has arrived at a new planet that her and a small crew are meant to explore and discover, to see if it can be used for the organizations plans.

The book is divided in a few parts and especially the first part was not at all captivating. It was very focused on the science of things and very little on the characters. Because of that it failed to grab me. It isn't that the science wasn't interesting or what they were discovering, but the wrapping wasn't captivating.

That kind of continues on throughout the book. I don't think I ever really got to know Juna as a character despite some of the traumatic experiences she went through. It got slightly better once they were off the ship but not enough to feel anyway about this character.

On the planet it became a lot more interesting as we got a much better idea what the planet looked like and who the habitants were. But as the story continued we got a lot of the same and not a whole lot was discovered. Of course they had a lot of stress and were trying to surive. But they were still scientists and I think it would have done a whole lot of good to the story if they had discovered a little more about how to communicate with the habitants at least.

If you don't nessecarily need a lot of characterization and love scifi for the science and surivival, this one could be very much be of interest to you.

“Let me put it into words you can understand. Life begins in darkness, where it belongs. There is only darkness, the natural state of all that is, so why should a word even be needed for it?“

So, two women crashland on an inhospitable moon. No oxygen, high gravity, total darkness. And things that go bump in the everlasting night. To have any chance of rescue, they have to limp halfway around this moon in their little, cramped and damaged pod. No big deal, right?

Rich in sarcasm. The POV from the alien(s) is nicely done. I rooted for them. I thought it would all be running very slow limping from the creepy aliens and much screaming, but there is a lot more.

You need patience! Well, I did anyway. This is slow. So slow. And so much dense text and information. But this world is so cool and I just love Tchaikovsky‘s wicked imagination and humour. It took me two weeks to get through this and towards the end I was at first disappointed at the direction the plot took and then it got really good again.

Loved the ending! I doubt that there will be a sequel, but I would love to read it. Great stuff. After finishing the book, I had to go back and read all the interludes again. The headspace and progression of the aliens was fascinating.

Tchaikovsky is showing yet again a very repressive dystopian, corporate society, without personal freedom or choices. It reminded me in parts of Cage of Souls and quite strongly of Alien Clay. If you liked that one, this should be right down your alley.

One of the things I like about Tchaikovsky‘s writing: It doesn‘t matter what gender the characters are and physical descriptions are just that. It took me half the book to figure out if the main character is female or male. It could have gone either way. Very refreshing.

Because of the slow pacing I figured for most of this that I would give it 4 stars, but considering how excited I am about this book, 5 stars it is! 🌚🌚🌚🌚🌚

P.S.: „… the slowest and most obvious heist in history.“
Good one! 😆

I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher or author through NetGalley. All opinions are my own and I was not required to give a positive review.

Thank you Netgalley for allowing me to read this.
As I come to expect from Adrian Tchaikovsky, it was absolutely brilliant in worldbuilding and atmosphere. He created a world with varying species. I would love to look into his mind. There is so much creativity in making up a completely unknown world and how it was a little bit "humanized" over time.
Both women in their peril were great to follow and their pain and angst at times never knowing if they might make it or not. Also I loved following of the Shroud creature and their thoughts.
Another wonderful book by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I would recommend this author anyone who wants to read someting unique in world and creatures as well as the undertone of humanization of said world.

As a fan of Adrian Tchaikovsky I know what I'm in for, vivid scenes painted with wonderful writing and a real imagination of what is possible. Shroud is perfect for me but I also think it makes for a fantastic entry point if you've never read his work before.

The story and concepts are gripping and had the almost pace of a thriller as much as it does a Sci-fi. The female characters are well written, as ever and you're always on edge for them all the way through this clever, twisting story.

Put this with Alien Clay and Service Model as some excellent Sci-fi stand alones from A.T you should 100% try out if you like any form of science fiction.

Stars I gave just for the last 10 percent of story... Let me put this into words you can understand... well... sorry I can't...

The crew of the Garveneerr Composite Mission Vessel, a Special Projects team, is on Shroud, a zero-oxygen, high-radiation planet. After an unexpected accident, Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne find themselves in a small, makeshift vehicle, separated from their ship and lacking communication. As they travel through Shroud, they find species...

And now this, you should know, this is how a science fiction horror story should go on, this is how alien and space planet develop and you freak out and pull your hairs out...

My huge thanks to Pan Macmillan via NetGalley for DRC. I have given my honest review.

I am in awe of Adrian Tchaicovsky’s imagination. His world-building is excellent. He has taken common Sci-Fi themes- humanity expanding through our galaxy, our rapacious ‘asset-stripping’ of everything we come across, and First Contact- and woven them into a rich, complex and somehow believable, survival-against-all-the-odds story. Two members of an exploration team, trapped on a world that is totally inhospitable to human life, try to make their way to safety, encountering the many and varied ‘monsters’ which inhabit Shroud. Persistently trying, and failing, to understand the mind and motivations of an ‘alien’ is a theme Tchaikovsky uses elsewhere, and I find it fascinating.
There’s adventure, humour, pathos, aliens(yay!) and even some soul-searching and moral dilemma. It’s maybe a teeny bit over-long in the middle, but later I didn’t want it to end. Always a sign of a good book.

It's fun, well-paced and well-written. Longer review to come soon, when I have more time to sit and write it.

The thing about staring into the abyss is that it's really dark in there, and whilst it might be staring back at you, there is a really good chance that it probably isn't using eyes at all - why would you develop sight if you lived in an abyss. Echo-location perhaps, or some other form of manipulation of the electromagnetic spectrum to use as your sense medium. That is one of the core concepts at the heart of Shroud, another of Tchaikovsky's examination of possible lifeforms in the universe, and how first contact might go.

Tchiakovsky's other preoccupation in this stream of writing is to also make the humanity doing the first contact singularly unsuitable for the task. In Alien Clay there was a fascistic, anti-science totalitarianism. Tidbits dropped in Shroud suggest that what is left in humanity is a neo-conservative capitalist wet dream, people and resources exist solely to produce profit and shareholder value, and if you cannot do that, you are put back into the freezer. Initially, this seems like a bit of interesting colour to a book which is largely about exploration and survival, but it comes through in the last section to show how it is unsuitable for scientific thought and problem-solving.

Shroud is the name given to the high gravity, high toxic gas planet that this wing of the company has been sent to, to exploit for its precious metals and whatever else can be mined, However it appears that there is life on the planet, unlikely though it seems, and the first non-human life found there is enough of a profit interest to start to explore, despite the planet being thoroughly inhospitable. And an accident leads to a crash landing in the experimental probe craft, and our leads: Engineer Mai Ste Etienne and Project Supervisor Juna Ceelander have to find some way to get rescued on a planet that is screaming with electromagnetic and radio noise, because that is how the creatures sense.

There is a real joy in the Vernian imagination on display about the planet itself, and Tchaikovsky lives up to his usual high standards of speculation followed by explanation. He is very interested in forms of intelligence, and this again follows a novel idea (and one that yet again finds an evolutionary niche for humanity in it). Shroud is an adventure novel first and foremost, but there is no stinging on the science, or the politics, or indeed the schadenfreude if you are looking for it. Another great addition to his canon.