Alien Clay Proves Why We’re Better Together: A Review
My favorite 2025 read knows exactly what it is.
“My fragile clay was thrust into the Kiln, and I feared the burning, but now I see the shape of me as I’m drawn out. Fired and fit.” (pg. 309)
Alien Clay was never going to be an average Sci-Fi reading experience. Adrian Tchaikovsky has a long backlog of work and I’ve only read 2.5 of them before this one, but even with that little experience I had I knew I was in for compelling, stimulating, and perceptive storytelling that would embrace me wholeheartedly and give me a deeper understanding of humanity, nature, and the forces that strive to defeat them both.
The Writing Style
Tchaikovsky’s writing alone is reason enough to give his books a try. Alien Clay is told in a first-person perspective that relays the story as though it’s happening in real time, but is intercepted by looming foreshadowing and informed hindsight given by a narrator who has already lived this experience and is retelling it. Because of this, the writing tends to veer into ‘telling’ instead of ‘showing,’ overtly going against the popular writing advice that even the most amateur of writers have heard. However, it works because, as I said, it’s retelling an experience and Tchaikovsky is able to balance that sometimes direct writing by infusing it with the narrator’s dry humor, observant eye, curious doubts, and scientific brilliance. A lesser writer may’ve botched the effect but Tchaikovsky isn’t lesser and, as far as I’m aware, never has been. The narrator’s distinct voice is so embedded within the writing that it has personality, attitude, and picturesque language at even its most neutral moments.
Character, Science, & the Human Heart
The narrator and main character of Alien Clay was one I found surprisingly funny and self-aware. Given the strained circumstances and unstable environment they’re all in, he gives himself and others the luxury of being understood. He acknowledges and accepts the more selfish decisions they’ve each made for one reason or another.
“It’s fear of the whip, not greed, that turns us all into potential betrayers.” (pg. 58)
There were moments where he internally addressed his own selfish, flawed tendencies and either corrected them or ignored them in favor of self-preservation. He was incredibly relatable, human, in that way and in others.
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As a scientist, an academic, and an insurrectionist, most wouldn’t have any initial relation to Professor Arton Daghdev, whose political activism gained him attention and punishment from the Mandate, the fascist regime back on Earth that has spread multiplanetary. Despite this, Tchaikovsky gave me all of the most important reasons to feel relatability. Using his zoology expertise and typical science jargon that I was able to understand perfectly even as someone who regularly fell asleep in science class — biology, chemistry, physics, you name it — he explored humanity and all that it comes with, good and bad, to convince me that me, Arton, all of his fellow “labor workers” (read: slaves), and even the alien ecosystems and lifeforms on the planet of Kiln have an infinite amount in common. All the way from the inner workings of our biology to our intrinsic necessity and desire for connection and community.
“A general alarm to another assemblage of life […] Part of some ridiculously complex dance of life cycles […] We’ve triggered a response to our intrusions at last, and here comes the cavalry, responding to ancient alliances of shared biology.” (pgs. 226–227)
“[…] he has more in common with the convicts under his jurisdiction than his masters back on Earth. Just as they’ll soon have more in common with the busy world of Kiln than with him.” (pg. 374)
My Ultimate Worry
What I appreciated even more so than this, however, was how Tchaikovsky emphasized, numerous times, that this does not remove our individuality. It doesn’t delete what makes us important while not being important at all. And that in itself carries importance.
“When there is sufficient interconnection, sufficient complexity, the world wakes, and knows itself.” (pg. 369)
When I first realized where the major themes of Alien Clay were going, I was fully onboard. After reading another fifty pages after that point, I recognized that it could go down the wrong path if Tchaikovsky weren’t so perceptive. Thankfully he, the book, and Arton emphasized the exact aspect I was looking for, securing Alien Clay as my favorite read of 2025.
“…you can still be yourself, even as you become a part of something greater. There’s no way I can describe what it’s like without sounding like I’ve converted to some insane cult, though.” (pg. 384).
I found the repeated comparisons to cults to be incredibly fitting because that was where my mind went; the story started moving in that direction and I was concerned. But the book and Arton were self-aware about things from the first chapter all the way to the end in both serious and humorous ways, depending on the sensitivity of the situation. Sometimes the humor was ironic or sarcastic or cynical or dark — the last of which made me love the writing all the more. Dark humor done correctly. So rare these days.
Connections to Today
Speaking of these days, Alien Clay is extremely relevant to the current political climate in the U.S., as well as to the culture that has surrounded A.I.. Specifically the underestimation of the art of humanity that has surged from it.
“…passing these gems of human creativity around the circle, we reassure each other that our wits remain intact. That we still have each other.” (pg. 277)
Tchaikovsky managed to take a time with technology vastly different from ours on a planet incredibly alien to ours and showed that it’s actually all the same.
Additionally, in Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral inauguration address on January 1st at New York City Hall he said, “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” Perhaps this is an unrealistic, but righteous, fantasy that disregards the natural self-seeking mentality that even the most altruistic people can revert to if under pressurized duress. But in any case, Alien Clay explores that fantasy, how it could only strengthen communities, institutions, and society as a whole.
Closing Thoughts
Corporate America, A.I. and technology, arts and humanities, fascist propaganda, power and control, societal patterns, the human condition. This book does it all and it’s all done so well.
I could write individual papers on each of these particular aspects of the book, but it’s honestly so fun to go on that journey with the story, so I encourage everyone to do so. Alien Clay may lead you down avenues you hadn’t wanted to travel before, or it may expand upon ideas you’ve been craving to engage with further.
I was impressed by Tchaikovsky with this book and, despite having only finished two others by him (Children of Time and Empire In Black and Gold), I’m rather confident in giving him the title of my favorite Sci-Fi author (CoT was my #1 read of 2023) and adding him to my all-time favorite authors list. This book cemented it for me.
We’re living in a time of repeated history where collectivism is continually stricken by the hammerhead of individualism, grooming a culture to put the self over everyone else at all costs. Completely forgetting that when the collective drowns, the solitary inevitably sink as well. But Alien Clay proves why we’re so much better together than we’ve ever been apart and reveals how, even then, we can hold onto the pieces of ourselves that maintain our individual purposes.
MY RATING: ★★★★★
GENRES: Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopia, Speculative Fiction
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2024
PUBLISHER: Orbit
FORMAT: paperback, 388 pages
