Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky

“But, like I said, entropy was the house that always won in the end. Everything we humans had ever built, from a stone axe to a spaceship, was just borrowing from a universe that would always claim it back with interest. Our whole civilization, art, mind and tech, was founded in the shadow of that truth.”

-Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Tchaikovsky is one of those authors who kind of intimidates me with the enormity of his published works. He has written prolifically across science fiction and fantasy, and I have loved what little I have read by him so far, but it’s also nice knowing I have so much to look forward to as well.

Shroud is a science fiction horror novel and was riveting. It took me a little bit to get into the story because I really wanted to grasp everything that was going on. Juna and Sti Etienne are part of a crew assigned to study a planet and learn and conduct research about it in order to be able to strip it of its resources and possibly help settle it. Juna and Sti Etienne are assigned to the planet Shroud and despite the dozens and dozens of drones they’ve sent to its surface, they have learned next to nothing about the planet or the creatures on it. But what they have learned is enough to make their funding continue to be granted.

Eventually, they are told they have to develop the technology to send a human to the surface. Juna and her team disagree with this approach as sending anyone down there would ultimately lead to their death. But they do their job regardless and pods are built, even though Juna hopes they will never be used. But when a freak accident occurs, the only way to escape the explosions in their spaceship is to hurl themselves into one of the pods. Juna and Sti Etienne are thrust onto the surface of Shroud, against their will and it will be up to their resourcefulness and intelligence to survive.

What unravels is a tense story in which the reader follows Juna and Sti Etienne as they try to find their way off Shroud while learning everything they can about the creatures that dwell there. But the creatures of the Shroud are more intelligent than they realize, and they are learning just as much as Juna and Sti Etienne….

This book was wild, and I loved it. I haven’t read much in the way of scifi horror, so this was such a fantastic departure into a book I may normally not have read. Adrian Tchaikovsky is incredibly talented, and I am so excited to have so many more books of his to dive into.