Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I would like to thank Tor UK for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Tor

Published – Out Now

Price – £22 hardback £11.99 ebook

They looked into darkness. The darkness looked back . . .

A commercial expedition to a distant star system discovers a pitch-black moon alive with radio activity. Its high-gravity, high-pressure, zero-oxygen environment is deadly to human life, but ripe for exploitation. They named it Shroud.

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.

But as they travel, Juna and Mai begin to understand Shroud’s unnerving alien species. It also begins to understand them. If they escape Shroud, they’ll somehow have to explain the impossible and translate the incredible. That is, if they make it back at all . . .

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!